About a 45-minute drive from Nuwara Eliya is the Horton Plains National Park. Here you can do a nice hike to ‘World’s End’ where you have a phenomenal view of the central highlands of Sri Lanka. The hike in Horton Plains National Park is beautiful and fairly easy. Below we share all the information about Horton Plains, what to bring and what to consider (spoiler: you have to get out of bed early!)
Content of this blog:
Preparation
Before you embark on the hike in Horton Plains National Park, it is wise to take care of a few things the day before. Because you start the hike super early, you can’t have breakfast beforehand. Most hotels in Nuwara Eliya will give you a breakfast pack for during the hike. However, it’s still nice to bring some food of your own so you have enough energy during the hike in Horton Plains National Park. Stock up on some bananas and an energy bar the day before and make sure you have enough water to take with you.
Please note that you are not allowed to bring plastic into Horton Plains!
Before the entrance to Horton Plains National Park, your backpack will be checked for plastic. You are not allowed to bring plastic waste into the park, so this is actually taken out of your backpack and thrown away. We were given a small cup of yogurt by our hotel and even that was not allowed inside. So make sure – if you pack things – do it in cardboard. An energy bar, for example, is allowed inside, but without plastic packaging.
The hike in Horton Plains National Park: what time do you leave?
You prepared well, went to bed early and at 05:00 your alarm clock is set, ready to go hiking! Put on long, comfortable pants, good walking shoes underneath, and a shirt with a thick sweater or vest over it. Ready to go! You want to drive out of Nuwara Eliya no later than 05:30.
It is a half-hour drive by minivan to the entrance of Horton Plains. By tuktuk it takes almost an hour. It is quite steep to the top, which is quite a challenge for the little tuktuks. The entrance opens at 6 a.m. so if you are too early you will have to wait a while. At the entrance to the National Park you need to buy entrance tickets. For 2 persons (non-Sri Lankans) + a tuk-tuk we paid 21,000 LKR (€70). Quite a high price!
Start of the hike in Horton Plains
After you buy your entrance ticket you may drive through the gate. From here it is a +/- 5 minute drive to the parking lot. Pack all your stuff, go to the restroom and walk to the entrance. Here your backpack will be checked for plastic, after which you officially start your hike in Horton Plains. You hike straight ahead for a bit, until you come to a fork where you see the sign below.
When doing so, keep to the left! After all, you want to hike to World’s End first, which is why you started early. Every day between 09:00 and 10:00 the fog lifts at World’s End, leaving you with little visibility. This is a huge waste of the beautiful, peaceful view. That’s why you want to walk toward World’s End first, to make sure you’re not looking into the fog.
World’s End and Mini World’s End
First you end up at mini world’s end, which we still don’t quite know why it’s called mini because this is SO cool!
From here, walk straight ahead to get to Great World’s End as well. The hike is fantastically beautiful so far and here you can enjoy it intensely. It takes about an hour from the start of the hike to get to Great World’s End in Horton Plains National Park.
We found Great World’s End to be the ideal place to sit down and have breakfast. With the sun on your face, the sound of the birds and the view of the mountains you imagine yourself in a whole other world. In addition, it is also (nice and) cool, a great contrast to the rest of Sri Lanka.
Are you ready to move on? Then continue the trail toward Baker Falls. To get here you’ll hike through a wide landscape with lots of greenery. Here you often see cows, goats and other animals. There is only one route you can follow. This means you don’t have to look for signs or doubt whether you’re going the right way, very nice. It is so nice and relaxing to walk across this great plain and just enjoy nature.
After a while across the plain, you come to a forest. Here you follow the steps, which is a short climb. Then you follow the trail that runs through the forest and come to a T-junction where you keep left to go to the falls. You can also see the steps going down here and often you can hear the waterfall. After 5 minutes of descending, you’ll be at Baker’s Falls!
Again, you can sit for a while to enjoy the waterfall. Take a nice picture and eat something for energy. After this, you will in fact finish the round trip and hike back to the entrance. You’re about another hour from here, again hiking through beautiful, vast landscapes. At the exit, you look back one last time: Horton Plains National Park was a wonderful hike!
From Horton Plains travel on directly to Ella
All in all, you will spend between 3 and 4 hours on the hike in Horton Plains National Park. Including driving back and forth to Nuwara Eliya, you will be on the road for over 6 hours. You can also choose to drive straight to Ella, if you have already done all the fun activities in Nuwara Eliya.
If you travel with your own tuktuk, this can easily be done. We left our backpacks in our tuktuk. We attached the backpacks to the tuktuk with a cable and closed the side flaps of the tuktuk so that it was not immediately visible that there were backpacks in the tuktuk. If you don’t like this idea you can also ask at the entrance of the Horton Plains National Park if you can leave your backpack or suitcase there.
Are you traveling by public transportation? Then you can return to Nuwara Eliya to take a hot shower and then catch the train to Ella. This is the best part of the world-famous train ride from Kandy to Ella, so you can enjoy this to the fullest as well!
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