Above the clouds..

.. Freedom must be boundless, as Reinhard Mey once sang. And I believe he was here when he wrote the lyrics to his hit song.

Ella is small, wonderful, lovable, and somewhere in the mountains of Sri Lanka. The day here begins with a view of the infinite expanse and ends with the horn of the small mountain railway, which snakes its way through the mountains and fields. Everything is cozy here, the people are unbelievably friendly, and nature is simply pristine and incredibly intense.

It's hard for me to put into words what I've experienced here, because I think I'm a little bit in love. Maybe it's also the rose-tinted glasses through which we've seen. But no, I think this is something serious.

In our accommodation, the Onestar Homestay, our last two days started with sunshine and breakfast on the balcony. The family here has made virtue out of necessity and serves all their guests directly in the rooms due to lack of space. It can't be more beautiful in a 5-star luxury resort. And in such a resort, the staff probably wouldn't have taken so much time for detailed conversations with the guests. Even if the conversations sometimes resemble a name dance in Waldorf school, in the end, they understand each other and start the day with a smile.

After breakfast, we explored the area on our own, without the help of tuk-tuks. After about two hundred meters downhill through the jungle, you reach the railway tracks. Here too, the locals have found ways to create 'short' paths for ascending and descending to the village using stones, wood, and roots. Once on the tracks, you can decide which direction to walk. We tried both sides and thus 'discovered' Ella village, a tea factory, the Nine Arches Bridge, and Little Adam's Peak on the first day, and the Ravana Falls and Ella Rock on the second day.

I'm telling you, it's great. You walk on the railway tracks because it's simply the fastest and most direct connection between the many small hotspots here. Along the way, you encounter local children on their way to school, other backpackers, or tethered cows that are simply 'parked' next to the railway tracks to graze during the day. About every one to two kilometers, there are small straw huts where the residents sell coconuts, corn cobs, or delicious rotis, a type of flatbread made from coconut and wheat flour.

If you leave the tracks, it's usually because you want to climb a mountain, see a waterfall up close, or because a train is coming, which then rolls past at a speed of 20 km/h, bringing more people or new goods to the small mountain village.

From the tracks, we always walked through the jungle and past tea, rice, or vegetable plantations. It's simply pure nature and as colorful and pristine as you imagine it when reading. As a map to Little Adam's Peak, our host drew a small sketch on an A4 sheet for us, and for the walk to Ella Rock, we used the extremely helpful directions from another backpacker's blog. We reached our destination both times, and the efforts of the ascent were more than worth it.

The view from both peaks is simply breathtaking. The green mountains, the vast land, the tranquility, and the endorphins you release when you see all of this, make the experience extraordinary. At no time do you think of our everyday problems, and at no time have we ever regretted taking a single step.

The days pass by so quickly, and I don't really know how to describe the feeling when you fall into bed exhausted but happy in the evening. Sometimes it's like a journey into the past. You feel transported back to summer camp or East Germany. Everything is simple, cheap, but also somehow lovable, wild, and chaotic. Pretty 'beautifully crazy'...

But before going to bed, you definitely want to eat something. Naively, we set off on foot the day before yesterday evening and illuminated our way through the jungle with our headlamps. After some searching, we came across a local restaurant. A small and open palm-thatched hut by the roadside, from which a young Frenchwoman came out and greeted us with the words 'I can really recommend it'. So, we thought, let's just give it a try.

I can tell you, it was worth it. We were the only guests, and a woman with her three daughters cooked typical Sinhalese food for us. After a short time, the doors were opened, and suddenly we were faced with a kind of buffet where we could choose from many different curries, meats, and vegetables. It was so amazingly delicious.

We had my birthday dinner yesterday in the center of Ella. In a crazy bamboo house called UFO, we had pizza and steamed vegetables with mashed potatoes. Sometimes you just need something different than rice and curry. ;)

Speaking of birthdays... Thank you very much for all the kind wishes and greetings. I was really delighted. Even though we are having one of the most beautiful trips of our lives here, you become even more aware of how great it is to have a loving family and good friends.

We miss you (a little bit at least) and send you a thousand greetings and kisses. See you soon, Sina and Matti