The Seven-Arches Bridge

 

Feb. 21

            We had a lovely breakfast on our porch and took it easy for a while before heading into Ella.  Our shortcut along the train tracks made for a quick walk as we headed to the town described by many travelers we encountered elsewhere as being crazy and overrun. 

            Maybe it’s crowded by Sri Lankan standards, but it was a walk in the park next to navigating India or China.  There were few sidewalks but the only real problem was when you met a pedestrian coming the other way and had to negotiate who inched further into the moderately busy traffic.

            We wanted to head to the famous seven-arches bridge.  Our guidebook gave us fairly cryptic directions there, but a big sign next to the road pointed us in the right direction.  A short and pleasant hike through the woods led us to an open lookout above the bridge with simple benches and different train schedules posted which contradicted each other.  One of them had a train listed in the next 15 minutes so we took a break, hydrated and enjoyed the view.  A few minutes later we heard chugging and were in luck as we got to see a train slowly cross the bridge right beside the many tourists and vendors remaining on the bridge.  Meg is really proud of the footage she got.

            We did the short hike from our lookout down to the bridge and entered a cluster of makeshift cafes with vendors hawking foodstuffs and trinkets.  The path beside the tracks on the bridge was fairly wide, to accommodate all of the people were heading in every which direction.  There were lookout areas on either side, paths down to the lower river and a restaurant overlooking the tracks that probably charged premium prices for the birds-eye view.  There was construction going on which we feared was for some international tourist hotel but the posted signs said it was for erosion maintenance.

            We wanted to avoid retracing our steps so we followed the tracks back into town.  This first leads you through a dark, damp tunnel with bats on the ceiling at its deepest part.  We figured that we were safe from meeting a train as we saw one go past half and hour previously but another one came by just after we emerged from the other side of the tunnel.  We were lucky, as there was space to move off the tracks inside of the tunnel but the safe areas were wet and murky.

             The trip back along the tracks seemed much longer than our walk there, probably because it was less interesting and the day was very hot.  Walking with us were mostly families, who would go off on side paths to their homes in the Ella “suburbs”.

            We eventually came to the train station and walked down town to look for lunch.  We settled on the UFO bar with a cool open-concept huge grass hut vibe as well as excellent drinks and decent food.  We did some shopping for postcards, gifties and a few groceries and headed back to our place for afternoon relaxation.

            We were supposed to visit our monk host at the school where he was the principal  but he didn’t return our texts.  Later he said that government officials showed up for an inspection and so it wasn’t a good day for guests. 

            We headed back downtown for dinner and Google maps led us astray in search of a top-rated restaurant so we settled for a just okay place that was close by. The walk back to our place was dark along the tracks but quick.