Names of places in Sri Lanka had been straight forward so far into our roadtrip, until we told Nilan that we wanted to go to Nuwara Eliya after Kandy/Pinnawala. He looked at us and reconfirmed “Nur’Eliya?” to which we puzzly replied, “no, we want to go to Nuwara Eliya.” Oh the confusion – because apparently one doesn’t pronounced this particular name syllable per syllable as written. Nur’Eliya it was!

To get on with our itinerary, we needed to first drive back towards Kandy, passing the Colombo-Kandy road once again. It was a rather picturesque stretch of road, with views of rolling hills on one side of the road. However, as we were in a hurry in the morning to be at the sanctuary by opening time, we didn’t really appreciate what we saw as we should. This time, we took the opportunity to actually slow down and enjoy the views.

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