A walk on the Pekoe Trail

Together with our trekking guide, naturalist and yoga teacher Sanath, Jerry and one of our guests walked Stage One of the Pekoe Trail recently. The trail starts at the Ceylon Tea Museum on the road from Kandy to Jungle Tide and passes close to us, skirting the dramatic escarpment of the Hanthana range for most of Stage One, which ends at the small town of Galaha. The whole trail is 300km long, winding through the hill country to its end near Nuwara Eliya. https://web.facebook.com/srilankapekoetrail/?_rdc=1&_rdr

Although the trail can be downloaded from Wikiloc, not everyone is comfortable with trying to follow a footpath on a phone in remote country, and the trail is not waymarked, so having Sanath to guide us was essential. Besides, it’s much nicer to look at the mountains than to look at a screen! Sanath explained points on the route, and nature from lichens to eagles. An excellent guide who also comes recommended by our guests for his yoga teaching skills and his incredible knowledge of birds.

The 12km route passed through a couple of villages with Hindu and Buddhist temples, tea muster sheds and kade shops, but is mostly in open country and on unsurfaced tea estate roads. Some short sections are simply footpaths while others are on concreted stretches. One of the concreted stretches had a row of leopard footprints, left by one of the Hanthana leopards when the concrete was setting.

The one disappointment on this splendid walk was that we failed in our desire to see the standing rock featured in the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, much of which was shot in Hanthana. Sanath knows the location but the side path leading to the rock had not been maintained and has become impassable. Sanath explained that when he worked for the nearby and very upmarket W15 hotel, he and the hotel’s head gardener kept the path clear, but since he left, the hotel has not kept this up, which is a shame as the location is a potential tourist attraction and is featured on the information board near the start of the trail. Sanath has promised to clear the path again with the help of our staff at Jungle Tide, so perhaps what a large hotel is unable to achieve may be done by a small homestay! We’ll let you know on our website when the path has been cleared again.