{"id":2829,"date":"2017-12-21T10:43:24","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T02:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/?p=2829"},"modified":"2019-09-20T12:35:49","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T04:35:49","slug":"20170719horton-plains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/2017\/12\/21\/20170719horton-plains\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 9 of Sri Lanka Trip, Horton Plains Hike on July 19, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ninth day of our Sri Lanka trip as we planned to hike the Horton Plains and take a train to Ella for the day.<\/p>\n

\"Mist<\/a>

 \"Mist<\/a><\/br>Mist over Plain<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s said that the best time to visit Horton Plains was early morning before 10am, that’s when the clouds would roll in and block the views from World’s End. That means our misery<\/del> journey started at 5am in the morning.
\nTo make matters worse, the not-so-<\/del>budget hotel that our driver helped us find had this weird way of cost-cut by cutting off electricity in the rooms early in the morning. So we woke up at like 4:45 in the morning to our dismay in total darkness to find our cell phones and laptops not fully charged, but somehow we managed to pack our luggage with cell phone lights and departed this not-so-awesome hotel called Colling Wood<\/a> at 5:15. Oh yeah, with breakfast though, some ordinary pieces of bread that’s only there when our driver woke the doorman.<\/p>\n

After that, it’s a 50-minute ride starting in total darkness and light drizzles along the winding country roads of Sri Lanka to the ticket station of Horton Plains. On the way there we passed farms and orchards that I believed looked just like any typical British countryside, which was nice. And from time to time, we found ourselves in fast-moving mists over the plains that looked fabulous against twillight. So to sum up the ride, it’s Silent Hill minus zombies and dreadful BGM.
\nOh, we could have watched the sunrise on the way to Horton Plains. It’s just that luck wasn’t on our side, and we were driving in woods when the sun actually rose.<\/p>\n

Horton Plains<\/span><\/h3>\n

Unfortunately, chaos replaced scenery as we arrived at the ticket station of Horton Plains. Well, somehow everybody needs to purchase tickets at this ticket station 5km away from the start of trails. And instead of building a proper toll gate like the ones on the highway, Sri Lankans thought a hut on the side of the road should suffice as a ticket station but it didn’t. To begin with, this means one person from every visiting car must get off, find his way among dense fog to the ticket house, and in freezing wind stand there for 20 or so minutes before he can get his ticket. And since I was the only person awake in the car, that person was me. And, since Sri Lankans didn’t bother to build a proper parking lot at the spot, it’s a game of Klotski among stranded cars (whose drivers were waiting in line) to the actual entrance of the Park.<\/p>\n

So finally at 7am, we started our hike of Horton Plains, among shifting mists.
\nAnd here’s GPS tracking of our hike.
\n