World's End

The alarm rang at 3:45 and by 4:30 we were driving out of town. The Villa Cassandra, bless them, had prepared a packed breakfast to take with us. As we drove along the moonlit roads, we joined and were joined by various minibuses forming a small unofficial convoy.

Up we climbed, crossing and recrossing the railway we had arrived on yesterday. Soon after we found ourselves enveloped in fog as we corkscrewed up the mountainside. Higher we climbed until we broke out of the fog as the sun rose, about 6:30. The views over the mountains were superb, we were in a sort of cloud forest with tree ferns.

We entered Horton Plains National Park paying the R6080 entrance fee ( well, the entrance fee plus a load of other official charges and taxes by which it was enhanced). The trail left from the open but unmanned visitor centre some distance inside the park where we left the driver and ventured out on foot.

We were not alone. Tourists from all over the world were surging down the path. We successfully overtook a particularly noisy Chinese family all shouting to each other at the tops of their voices. Life got quieter as we got further into the walk, although an aerial view must have looked like a line of gaudy ants processing across the landscape. My favourite was the Chinese ladies' liking for plastic flowers in their straw hats.

We went first to Little World's End, then onwards to World's End itself. In both cases the gneiss of the mountainous plateau at an altitude of 2000 - 2100m drops away a thousand metres into the lowlands to the south, probably along fault induced scarps. The sun was shining and we had a clear view, only possible at this time of day because by 9:30 it has clouded over and their is nothing to see. This was probably the high point of our Sri Lankan tour, and certainly the most scenic breakfast stop.

The trail is circular and we proceeded through a strange landscape of grassland dotted with rhododendron trees to Baker's Falls. There is a lot of hydrothermal alteration to the gneiss, and I suspect the falls are where a more altered facies is faulted against a less altered one.

A welcome cup of coffee after the 9km walk and then a very slow descent to the hotel, mostly because we had to wait over half an hour at the level crossing for two trains to pass through.

After a rest we asked the driver to take us to Hakgala Botanic Gardens some 10km out of town. Again foreigners milked for R1100 as against R50 for locals, but can you complain when the standard of upkeep of these Victorian gardens is impeccable? A large army of gardeners is employed, using only hand implements looking to be themselves of Victorian pedigree. It wasn't flower season, but the acres of arboreta with most trees named made up for it. We followed the route suggested in the foreign visitors leaflet without difficulty. I was most impressed with the indigenous tree ferns, a species of Cyathea, and a weird version of the monkey puzzle tree from Australia (Araucaria).

Going back to the Grand Indian for supper so I'll post this now.