After going on the Highlands WWW trip in 10th grade, I have wanted to go back ever since. My main goal for OTG was to go back to Highlands and hike the second highest peak: Kirigalapota. To make this possible, I started to talk to Mr Lockwood so I could get him to book the bungalow we usually stay at. This trip was going to take place over a long 4 day weekend and one of those days was a Poya so many of the locals were using this opportunity to go up to Horton Plains too. This busy weekend left us disappointed as the bungalow had already been booked. Many other affordable options were no longer available either. Mr Lockwood said that this trip probably wouldn’t be possible but because I personally really wanted to go, I started looking for other options. I started talking to a few friends and that is when I found out that Gabie’s dad had a Unilever bungalow there and she was already planning to go to Nuwareliya for the long weekend.
With this, she loved the idea of taking a few friends along and this made this Highlands OTG trip possible. While we’d be in Nuwareliya, we decided to drive up to Highlands on a morning to do the hikes. I had proposed that we do World’s End and Kirigalapota on the same day so it saved us some time from having to drive back there the next morning although we were aware how challenging this was going to be. The World’s End loop trail is 9km long and Kirigalapota is 12 km and doing both would mean walking 23km which didn’t sit too well with a few of our friends coming on this trip. We agreed to do World’s End first and depending on how felt after it, we would decide whether to do Kirigalapota or not.
Came Wednesday the 28th of February, we were all ready to leave at 2:00pm from school. It was going to be a long 7 hour drive. We arrived at around 9:00 pm. We were all in bed by midnight and ready for an early start the next morning. We planned to be up by 4:00 am so we can leave by 4:30 am and arrive at Horton Plains by 6:00 am.
Some of us were happier than others at 5 in the morning but we all made our way to Horton Plains and were there by 6.
We also drove by the bungalow we stayed at in 10th grade for WWW as we made our way to the entrance of the trail.
When we started the walk, it was quite cold but I warmed up pretty quickly. There were multiple trials we could take that would only change the order of where we went first. We decided to go ahead with the trail where we went to Mini-World’s End, then World’s End and then Baker’s Falls all in a loop where we eventually ended up back at the entrance.
We got to the entrance at around 11 am and decided to head back to the bungalow in Nuwareliya for some lunch. We spent the rest of the day playing games, relaxing and talking. We went to the golf club for some time and then headed to Salmiya’s for some pizza.
The next day we had a late start with people waking up with no rush but a good eventful day nevertheless. After lunch, we headed out to go paddle boating and then to Victoria Park to walk around for a bit. From there we cane back to the bungalow for a quick snack and then headed over to Aamir’s house for some dinner.
A very memorable trip and definitely somewhere I want to come back before I leave!
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