Day5-7: 15-17/02/2024 – Nuwaraeliya
After a pre-breakfast birding session around the extensive Tree of Life hotel grounds and then breakfast, we set off for a 4 hour drive into the hills. We stopped at a tea plantation tourist attraction for half an hour on the way to our accommodation at the Black Pool hotel in Nuwaraeliya (the City of Light). On arrival at the Black Pool hotel we had a welcome ceremony involving the lighting of candles and being marked with a tilaka. After lunch we did some birding around the local dump and then went to a site for Sri Lankia Whistling-thrush - which we saw very well.
Images from the Damro tea plantation, the Black Pool hotel and the dump are in the gallery below (click on an image to enlarge and scroll through). |
Our main purpose in coming to Nuwaraeliya was to visit the Horton Plains NP. At an elevation of 2100m this was the highest place we visited. The day started out fine and we did some dawn birding outside the national park as entry is not permitted until 8am. Soon after we entered the park the clouds starting to arrive and then visibility became very poor with a constant drizzle. This was a great shame as this should also have been a scenic high spot of our tour. We gave it 2-3 hours but with no signs of improvement we abandoned our visit and returned to the hotel for lunch. In the afternoon we returned to the dump and were promptly successful in finding Kashmir Flycatcher which apparently likes to spend the winter in smelly surroundings - but had eluded us yesterday.
However, we did manage to see some wildlife
Next morning the weather was fine again and we did our pre-breakfast birding in the very well laid out Victoria Park in Nuwaraeiliya. We did well here seeing our only Pied Thrush and Indian Blue Robin of the trip.
We returned to the hotel for breakfast before setting off for our next adventure. As we were departing our driver, Herath, found the only snake of the tour.