The Pekoe Trail, Stage 16, Trekking from Ella to Demodera

Ella draws travelers to Sri Lanka’s highlands with its mountain forests, tea plantations, today’s walk to Demodera is very doable and very easy. It is one of the shortest stages of The Pekoe Trail
Ella draws travelers to Sri Lanka’s highlands with its mountain forests, tea plantations, and relatively cool climate and is a very popular stop, start, or ending point along the trail. Starting at the train station, today’s walk to Demodera is very doable and very easy. It is one of the shortest stages of The Pekoe Trail and one of the most popular ones.

As you leave Ella town walking along you will see the famous Nine Arches Bridge. This is a popular trail. You will be sure to meet a few other hikers on their way to or from the Nine Arches Bridge. The bridge is hauntingly beautiful and a major tourist attraction.

This exceptional Nine Arches Bridge is known as the bridge in the sky and is 80 feet high, and 300 feet long. The bridge was built during the colonial period in extremely challenging times as the original materials meant for creating it such as steal were allegedly relocated by Britain to resource the Great War. So instead in the end only made out of stone, brick and cement.

We enter the Demodara Tea Estate and walk upon a lovely tea trail and at the 4.5 km point, we leave the main trail and take a second one to our left. Look back and you’ll see the Nine Arches Bridge again but this time much further away. We follow this track for half a kilometer until we reach a small Buddhist shrine. Along the way, you’ll pass by the modest home of a cheerful family and no doubt hear the ‘maa’ greeting of the family of goats they care for.

Once you’re back on the main tea trail running through the Demodara estate we loop around this lovely estate for approximately 3 km. You’ll see a lovely lake on your left as you descend towards Demodara.

This is the story of this intriguing feat of engineering:

Demodara railway station is known for its spiral rail line at this location, popularly known as the ‘Demodara Loop’. The rail line passes under itself, going around the loop and emerging from a tunnel. The rail loop is approximately 900 meters.

“During construction, the engineers found that elevation between the hills at Demodara was too much for the track to negotiate, with the maximum inclination allowed by the Ceylon Government Railway being one foot per 44 feet (1/44), an innovative track design had to be devised. Local folklore has it that one of the engineers, Devapura Jayasena Wimalasurendra, was inspired after observing a Kankany (supervisor) in a local tea estate undo his turban and re-tie it around his head” (Wikipedia)

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