Kandy to Badulla

The trip from Colombo to Kandy is just a warm up for Sri Lanka’s most spectacular train ride: the British-era Main Line, built as a conduit for Sri Lanka’s most famous export – tea. The journey from Kandy to Badulla takes seven to eight hours, and carves through Sri Lanka’s tea country, passing swirling, curling plantations that appear hollowed into the hilly green landscape like the enormous fingerprints of a giant. Tidy fringes of lemongrass and canna bushes provide an ornamental trim around the edges, while tea-pickers in rainbow saris create vivid flashes of colour amongst the emerald sea. To make the most of the views, stake out a vantage point in one of the open train doorways, with your feet dangling above the track. The final stage from Ella to Badulla is perhaps the most dramatic section of the journey, with some spectacular feats of 19th-century engineering carrying the train across valleys and ravines and around problem outcrops. Just north of Ella, the tracks curve over the brick-and-stone Nine Arch Bridge before tackling the Demodara Loop, where the line circles a hilltop and passes back under itself. Many travellers end the journey at Ella and hike to viewpoints around the bridge, for one of Sri Lanka’s most popular photo opportunities.