Day 3:

Needless to say we had an excellent sleep that night, the freezing wind and cool temperatures saw to that. This day was all about Horton Plains.

At around 8:00 that morning we headed off to the famous park with the goal of climbing the 2nd highest peak in Sri Lanka, which we accomplished just for lunch. Our journey was pretty nice, hiking through the plains before reaching a cloud forest. Hiking in the cloud forest was a bit difficult, absolutely enraging a couple people with its steep overgrown paths and low hanging bushes however we saw a a lot of cool biodiversity unique to the high altitude.

Some of the cool species that we saw:

We also saw a little froggo all the way at the top of the peak but unfortunately I couldn’t get a picture of it.

Of course the biodiversity wasn’t the only thing we came for, the view were absolutely amazing. Fortunately I managed to get some nice, grainy pictures of it.

Day 4: we made the journey to Nuwara-Eliya today, more importantly to Jagro for some tasty fresh strawberries and cheesecake. After our shortish break we made our way to St Andrews for the final night and frog watching. There we had a nice lunch followed by a trip to the Victoria Park to see some of the endemic birds its known for, as well as (more importantly) the children’s playground with spinny toy things. From there, we went cargills to wait in line for some Kome crackers.

During the frog walk we also saw a big Huntsman, a Toad, two other kinds of frogs (whose names have left my mind) and a Rhino Horned lizard.

By the end of the walk we were absolutely freezing our butts off as it was 16 degrees. Needless to say we sprinted back to the hotel and plunged into the shower, only to discover that there was no hot water, only absolutely freezing cold glacier water which wasn’t nice or expected at all. Following the freezing shower, I ran down to the hot fire in the lobby to warm up. Dinner was pretty nice but what was better was the sleep, next to the heater, in a nice bed. That really capped off the trip. From there, we just hurried back to Colombo the next morning and got there before 5.

The last couple days were really outstanding, visiting the renowned Horton Plains, staying at St Andrews, visiting Victoria Park, the whole mix was just a really phenomenal end to the WWW experience. However it didn’t come without its challenges, the biggest of which was perseverance, either through the grueling Horton Plains trek, the icy temperatures the last night, and long, arduous car rides just to meet that end goal, a world class view, critically endangered frogs, unique ecosystems and biodiversity, it was all worth it-perhaps the greatest lesson we learned during the trip, how valuable nature is and the virtue of patience. Something that translates nicely into the DP.

The trip was filled with themes like comradery (watching people fall and not laughing too hard), obviously perseverance, learning new skills, open-mindedness etc. The trip also gave us unique insight to the highly localized ecosystems and biodiversity, learning about things like cloud forests and human impact on amphibians which are invaluable to an ESS student such as myself. But yeah, overall a great trip and learning experience. Recommend 10/10 even if your not the biggest fan of hiking because the view is more than worth it.