sasri2016 - Day trip to Ella from Wellawaya by tuk-tuk

Today was time to take a tuk-tuk and drive to Ella, from Wellawaya.
I wanted to see Ruwana Falls, Nine Arched Bridge and Ella as a city.

To my surprise, Ella wasn't actually a city. It was totally a tourist location, on a hilly spot. So first we went up a long way, with the tuk-tuk and then we came a lot down, when getting back to Wellawaya. ;)

In between we stopped to Ruwana Falls. This is a nice place, if you want to get a refreshing moment, or just your feet wet. I didn't go to water, because hadn't really prepared for anything like that.

When we got to Ella, did some shopping and driver asked for directions to Nine Arched Bridge. I think the visit to Nine Arched Bridge was worth the effort, but it did actually require some effort. I don't know if my driver was just given bad directions from locals, but our route wasn't too comfortable and he didn't dare to drive the tuk-tuk all the way (well you even can't drive it to the very end, but one tuk-tuk came past me, when I was getting back higher to the point where he was left).
Ella is at the altitude of 1041 meters. The old tuk-tuk was having quite a time with the ascending road. Sometimes going was so slow, that I could have slept there at the back seat (could you imagine sleeping in a normal tuk-tuk drive at these chaotic roads?).

About shopping - old truth came up again - try to find a local shop/market place, where locals do their shopping and buy things from other shops only after that. I forget this almost on every trip and when I found a good local, common market (like Tesco's Big-C in Phuket) I start to remember this. But anyway, some things were like half the price, that they would have been elsewhere. Though it's a bit annoying, that everyone starts to stare at you in the market place, because they are not used to tourists in those places. Cashier girls, in the market place, were school age. That seems as odd to me, as seeing someone older than my grandparents, serving food at Wendy's in Florida. (Well, my grandparents are dead, but I don't mean that Wendy's has undead serving food.)

We stopped for a lunch at Ella. There are not too many places and couple restaurants seemed better than others. I ate Kottu (was spelled Kohthtu here) with Chicken and cheese again. I couldn't even eat it all. My body has probably got used to these smaller dishes, which are also much lighter, than food back home. And Kottu is actually quite heavy. Gladly this didn't have potatos in it.
I got a video of making my Kottu dinner. Asked from waiter, if it's okay to take a video of chef making the food and he said it's totally fine.


Next I am going to have a dinner at hotel's restaurant. They have a'la carte -list also, so I think I am going with that, as chef's menu didn't seem that much appealing to me (and price is over 2400 rupies for that menu, well this is a splurge hotel, so it comes with the territory). A'la carte dinners were more like 1000 rupies, which is pretty much what upper scale dinners here should cost. Like in Tissamaharama and Mirissa's beach restaurants, in better restaurants dinners and lunch costed about 700 - 1000 rupies, depending on the type of food that you order.