Ella

Ella is a young settlement in an old landscape. The Uva hills around it were part of the Kandyan kingdom's eastern country, and the wider region rose against British rule in the Uva–Wellassa rebellion of 1817–18, which was crushed with great severity and left villages burned and land confiscated across the district. The gap itself, where the mountains fall away towards the southern plains, was long a route between the hill country and the lowlands, and local legend attaches the surrounding caves and falls to the Ramayana story of the demon king Ravana and the captive Sita.

What made the modern village was tea. Coffee planting spread through Uva in the mid-19th century and collapsed after a leaf disease struck in 1869; tea replaced it, and the slopes around Ella were cleared into estates worked by Tamil labourers brought from South India. The railway arrived to serve them: the line from Nanu Oya was pushed east through Haputale to Bandarawela and on to Badulla, reaching Ella early in the 20th century. The Nine Arch Bridge at Demodara, completed in 1919, and the spiral loop below it were built as part of that effort, the viaduct raised by local labour under British supervision in concrete and cement block rather than steel.

For most of the last century Ella was a stop on the line, a small settlement of estate offices, shops and a few bungalows. Travellers began arriving in numbers in the late 20th century, and after the civil war ended in 2009 the town grew quickly into a centre for walking and for the train journey through the hills. Guesthouses now climb the slopes on both sides of the valley, and the village has more beds than long-term residents.

Two populations share the valley. Sinhalese villagers farm smallholdings, paddy and vegetable plots and run most of the businesses in town, while the estates around Ella are worked largely by up-country Tamils, descendants of the labourers brought from South India in the 19th century, who live in estate settlements with their own Hindu kovils, Tamil-medium schools and festivals. Their community was left stateless for decades after independence and remains among the poorest in the country. Thai Pongal and Deepavali are kept on the estates, the Sinhala and Tamil New Year in April across the whole valley.

Buddhism shapes the calendar for the majority. Poya days are public holidays and local temples fill; the roadside Dowa temple between Ella and Bandarawela, with its rock-cut standing Buddha, is the best known nearby. Hindu shrines stand at the estate divisions, and small Christian congregations meet in the larger towns.

The third culture here is the visitors'. Ella's main street works in English, and its cafés, yoga classes, cooking lessons and tour desks exist for people passing through on the hill-country circuit. The result is a village where guesthouse-keeping, driving and guiding are common trades and where the contrast between the main street and the tea lines a few hundred metres away is sharp. Residents are used to walkers crossing their land, but the paths cross working estates and private gardens, and permission and politeness still matter.

Ella is small: the town has only a few thousand residents, and the wider division that surrounds it is made up of villages and estate settlements scattered across the slopes. Badulla, the provincial capital about 20 kilometres away, and Bandarawela are the towns people go to for offices, hospitals and bigger shopping.

Tea remains the backbone of the valley's economy. Pluckers, mostly women, work the estate fields by the kilogram, and smallholders sell green leaf to nearby factories. Vegetable plots, paddy in the lower ground and spices such as pepper and cardamom add to it. Tourism is the other pillar and the one that has changed the place: guesthouses, restaurants, tuk-tuk driving, guiding and shops now employ a large share of working-age residents, and the money is better than estate work but far more exposed to bad years.

Days begin early and cool, with mist in the gap, pluckers heading out at first light and the first train whistles carrying up the valley. Shops and cafés open late by rural standards and stay open into the evening. The village's pressures are those of fast tourist growth in a small place: water supply, waste and drainage, building on steep slopes, land prices, and crowding at the bridge and on the trails. Landslides after heavy rain are a recurring danger across the district.

The everyday food is hill-country rice and curry, plainer and more vegetable-led than on the coast. A plate might hold dhal, jak fruit or breadfruit, beans, pumpkin, a green mallung of chopped leaves and a coconut sambol, with a fish or chicken curry for those who want it, all cooked with coconut milk and the island's roasted curry powder. Many guesthouses cook it to order, and the spread is the reason a number of them run cooking classes.

Hoppers, bowl-shaped rice-flour pancakes often with an egg set in the centre, and string hoppers with dhal and sambol are morning and evening staples, and kottu roti is the noisy late dish, flatbread chopped on a hot plate with egg, vegetables and spice. Roti with coconut, short eats from the bakeries and vadai and thosai from the estate shops fill the gaps. Curd from buffalo milk, set in clay pots and eaten with kithul treacle, is sold along every road in these hills.

Tea is the local product, and the estates around Ella belong to the Uva district, whose high-grown leaf is prized for its distinctive flavour; several factories nearby sell their own. Alongside that, the main street has developed a second menu for long-staying travellers — banana pancakes, smoothies, fruit bowls and coffee — which sits oddly beside the village kitchens but has become part of the place.