Let’s go cycling

Heading Inland

6th August – Arugum Bay to Monaragala

Day 13- 77.5 km

Skipped the lousy brekky at our overpriced, overpromised and underdelivered Accom and hit the road at just on 6am- assuming that we’d find something to eat not too far down the road 🙂

30km later we dug deep to find the random muesli bars that were lurking in our packs…

Found a roti and something like a deep fried chilli donut later along the way…and an icecream a bit further on…but the pickings were a bit slim on the food front for today’s ride! We were gifted some handpicked random fruit that tasted a little like apple…can’t remember the name of them!

Left the dry coastal Plains behind us and headed into the hills and lush forest, no elephants to be seen (not sure of our action plan if we do see one!!) but the odd curious monkey along the way.

Komoot’s route didn’t work out for us today- leading us down a sandy track to someone’s home…so we backtracked and added another 10km on to the day’s ride to get us to Monagarala.

A few little hills to start getting us acclimatised for the coming days…and a very steep little climb up to today’s accommodation- $19 for the most gorgeous homestay up on a hill. Superb homecooked meal (eaten too much yet again…) and beautiful surrounds.

And rain!! The first time we’ve seen rain in our two weeks here, it’s lovely to sit out and watch the weather come in.

7th August- to Ella

Day 14- 70km

Elevation gain 1420m

Total so far 768km

Today was a lot of up! We were well fueled with coconut roti and dahl before heading off from the lovely forest spot at Monaragala.
A hot and humid morning ride took us up to the very busy town of Passara where we had to decide which way to go…the shorter route up to Badulla for the night or the longer (and steeper) way to Ella which was high on our list of must see places. Ella won- with 28km to go we thought that seemed doable.

Then it rained…and rained…and rained! We sat out the first heavy downpour but eventually we just got on with it and cycled through the wet. Quite pleasant for a while and most definitely cooling! But it was constant and often very heavy, so it did wear thin fairly quickly.

Made it to Ella around 3pm and sat around figuring out where to stay. Finally found a place a little out of town (I didn’t know there would be more hills…) and promptly decided to make it a two nighter. Lovely peaceful spot away from the madding crowds (although plenty of monkeys to entertain!)