Nuts and Bolts: Travel Tips for Ella, Sri Lanka — The Sublime Art of Doing Nothing
- Rand Blimes
- May 5
- 6 min read
Nuts and Bolts posts give you the practical information you need, but without stripping away the humor, mishaps, and little victories that make real travel what it is. These aren’t just guides. They’re how we actually did it—mistakes, triumphs, and all.
This page has some travel tips for Ella, Sri Lanka, to aid in planning your own trip. Remember, we are a family of five, and we travel mostly to eat. We were in Ella in January, 2016. If your trip to Ella is significantly different from ours, you may have a very different experience.
Right now, I am sitting at a desk in the Ella Village Inn Guesthouse. The power has gone out. Again. It is night, so I’m working by the light of my laptop and a single candle, which flickers like something out of a Victorian ghost story.
It is awesome.
Ella is a little mountain town tucked into the hill country of Sri Lanka, and after a rather stressful time in Galle and Kandy, Ella has been exactly what we needed. The Village Inn has the five of us comfortably settled into one large room, complete with high ceilings, canopy beds, and a balcony (which does offer a view of the misty mountains—as long as you’re willing to overlook the small stream choked with garbage at the foot of the guesthouse).
It’s all about perspective.
Ella itself is made up of one main street, one large secondary street, and several alleys that do their best impressions of streets. The town is cute. Sure, there’s construction everywhere and half the buildings appear to be in various stages of dramatic collapse. But this is South Asia. Look past the rubble and you’ll see it: cute little Ella.
Ella Weather: The Perfect Excuse for Glorious Inactivity
The weather has been terrible—rain, rain, and more rain for almost all of our four days here.
And that has been just fine with us.
We’ve ventured out into the surrounding tea-blanketed hills a bit, but mostly, we’ve embraced the rarest of travel arts: doing absolutely nothing.
If you’re only traveling for a week or two, you can afford to GO! GO! GO! every moment. But if you’re on the road for weeks or months, you soon learn that rest isn’t a luxury—it’s a survival skill.
Long-term travel is the perfect place to hone the sublime skill of doing nothing.
And Ella has been the perfect dojo for our training.
Not only has the weather encouraged inertia, but the internet has been utterly useless. No signal at the guesthouse. No functional wifi in the cafés. No rabbit holes to fall down.
So, we read. We play cards. The daughters paint their nails. We sit on the balcony, heroically ignoring the polluted creek and focusing instead on the mist-veiled hillsides that ring the town.
We simply are.
And it has been cathartic. Soul-restoring, even.
We love Ella.
(Pro Tip: If you’re coming here specifically to hike or trek, January is probably not the month to do it. Unless you enjoy sloshing through mud while wearing a rain poncho.)
Travel Tips for Ella, Sri Lanka: Getting to Ella from Kandy
The train ride from Kandy to Ella is one of Sri Lanka’s most popular tourist experiences. Which, of course, means it’s also a crowd-control nightmare.
If you can, get your tickets with reserved seats early—otherwise skip the standing-room-only option entirely. The ride takes seven hours and, as I’ve learned the hard way, if you’re standing, you won’t be seeing any scenery. The windows are too low for anyone who doesn’t qualify for kids prices.
If you must ride the train and can’t get a seat, here’s a workaround: Once you’re in Ella, take the train backward a stop or two, get off, and catch the next train forward. No luggage to wrangle, and your knees might still be fresh enough to squat for a window view.
If you manage to get a reserved seat from Kandy, by all means, enjoy the ride.
The Bus Option
You can also bus it. From Kandy’s Goods Shed bus station (which Google Maps puts in a slightly incorrect place—just head to the general area and ask some how to get to the bus station . . . or take a tuk tuk), catch a bus to Badulla.
The fare: 236 rupees (about US$1.40). Small luggage racks are available but laughably small. We ended up buying two extra seats—one for the daughters’ bags and one for ours. At these prices, it wasn’t exactly a financial hardship.
Expect close bodily contact with your seatmates. Think of it as a cultural exchange.
The ride to Badulla takes about 3.5 hours. At the Badulla station, just ask anyone for the Ella bus. Everyone was incredibly helpful.
The fare to Ella: 50 rupees (less than US$0.50). We scored the back seat—a glorious bench across the full width of the bus—piled our bags in one spot, and I draped my legs across Michelle’s bag. One extra seat purchased. Efficiency achieved.
This leg takes about half an hour. Tell the driver or fare collector that you want to get off at Ella (the bus doesn’t terminate there). They’ll drop you at the start of the main street, where guesthouses abound.
We arrived during the hectic Christmas season and still found a place with minimal effort.,, and the bus left us far less stressed than the train.
Sleeping for the Cheapskate Family
Night 1:
Double: 3000 rupees (US$20)
Triple: 3500 rupees (US$25)
The double room smelled like something that had been sealed since the British colonial era. Internet didn’t reach the rooms but worked if you hovered near the office. Adequate for one night.
Nights 2-4:
Ella Village Inn (formerly the Holiday Inn, now called just Ella Inn)
One big room: 6500 rupees (US$45)
Optional breakfast: 500 rupees per person (we skipped it—you can eat cheaper in town).
The room was fantastic. Probably our favorite stay in all of Sri Lanka.
The wifi, however, was a crime against humanity. Possibly the worst in all our travels. On par with the digital black hole that is Luang Prabang. The cafés fared no better. They advertised wifi, but it was either “broken” or so slow it felt like a dial-up connection powered by a hamster wheel.
Eating
Rawana Holiday Resort, hailed in every guidebook as Sri Lanka’s culinary Mecca, was a disappointment. Not bad, just . . . average, overpriced, and guilty of crimes against dahl.
Buffet: 800 rupees (US$5.50)
Highlights: sweet eggplant, decent potato curry, salty garlic curry.
Lowlights: a bitter, aggressive fish curry and the aforementioned dahl, which the wife rated the worst of the trip.
Skip it.
Our champions were:
Fish and Chips (where we ironically never ordered fish and chips).
Both spots are easy to find.
Go for:
Vegetable roti (stuffed with spiced potato).
Coconut and chocolate roti (a unanimous family favorite).
Masala thosai, poori, and pratha with curry.
Some of the best kottu we had in Sri Lanka (at Roti House, especially).
Most meals for five came in under 2000 rupees (US$14). Victory.
The Village Inn’s own restaurant served overpriced, mediocre Western food. The pizza was okay. But honestly? Stick with Sri Lankan cuisine while you’re here.
Breakfast was a mixed bag. The hoppers we ate in Ella weren’t fresh. Fruit stands along the main street offered reliable goodness, and there was always curry and roti, the breakfast of champions.
Bonus: The shops along the street sell Hawaiian cookies (coconut biscuits). We became addicted. Ironically, we’ve never seen them at home in Hawaii.
Doing
There’s plenty of walking and trekking available. Most guesthouses can point you to:
Little Adam’s Peak
Local waterfalls
Tea-blanketed hills just across the tracks from the station
We did less walking than we’d planned, thanks to the relentless rain. But honestly? Sitting indoors, playing cards, reading, and watching the mist roll over the hills was exactly what we needed. Because travel.
Old tree in the tea fields surrounding Ella
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