A Day Trip to Nuwara Eliya from Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka

While spending two days in Kandy, we got FOMO over not having planned to take the Sri Lanka train from Kandy to Ella. So at the last minute, we decided to take a day trip to Nuwara Eliya, which is in the heart of Sri Lanka’s tea country and on the train route to Ella. It’s an exhausting way to see this part of the country, but if you’re pressed for time, here’s how you can do Nuwara Eliya as a day trip on the train from Kandy.

The trickiest part of doing this as a day trip and not as a stop is scheduling the transportation. To take the train from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya (the station is actually Nanuoya), you only have two options at 8:47 am and at 11:10 am. There is no train back later in the day, as the latest train from Nanuoya to Kandy leaves at noon.

So we booked a car to pick us up at some arbitrary spot in Nuwara Eliya to take us back to Kandy. The earliest train from Kandy gets you in Nuwara Eliya, in theory, by 12:40 pm though we got in an hour later.

We scheduled our car for 6 pm. Depending on what you want to do around Nuwara Eliya, this may or may not be enough time. Given that the train ride takes around 3-4 hours and the drive back takes around 3 hours as well, the biggest caveat to doing this is how much time you’ll spend in transit (which is visiting Sri Lanka in a nutshell). ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).