Horton Plains National Park

An early wake up call and a clunker car without a front window defrost—we are talking NO vents on the dash—had Gary looking like a cross between Mr. MaGoo and Dumb and Dumber trying to deliver us safely to Horton Plains National Park. The one lane road, which appeared to be built by tiny trolls one mini asphalt mound at a time, was a spectacular, winding ascent through jungle to over 2,000 meters. At the top, we found undulating and eerie grassland plains interspersed with forest patches, somewhat resembling the northern California coast. It seemed quite unusual for a grassland paradise to be perched in such a highland location and especially in Sri Lanka, a more jungly than not island country. Knowing the mist and clouds roll in after 9:00 a.m., we hustled to the World’s End trail. But first, our progress was slowed when we were stopped by park rangers who had us remove plastic and trash from our packs— this turned out to be a very thorough process. They ripped labels off water bottles, opened all pre-packaged snacks and dumped them into biodegradable paper bags, plus scrounged for loose wrappers and what nots. This process is embarrassing when you carry a bit more than you need—security cam footage may reveal we had several cookie options requiring us each to eat, at the minimum, 33 cookies per person on a 9 km sojourn. After the cookie pat down, we hiked to World’s End, an impressive escarpment plunging 880 meters down, and then continued on to a pleasant waterfall. The completion of this trail would have been a excellent way to end the day. However, our Europcar rental car, which was leased to us with the engine and temperature light fully illuminated, had more adventures in store—the most notable being it stopped short of our hotel.