Best for spectacular views Start – Badulla End -Kandy The trip from Colombo to Kandy is just a warm-up for Sri Lanka’s most beautiful train ride: the British-era Main Line, built as a conduit for Sri Lanka’s most famous export: tea. The journey from Kandy to Badulla takes seven to eight hours and carves through Sri Lanka’s tea country, passing swirling, curling plantations that appear hollowed into the hilly green landscape like the enormous fingerprints of a giant. Tidy fringes of lemongrass and canna bushes provide an ornamental trim around the edges, while tea pickers in rainbow saris create vivid flashes of color amongst the emerald sea. To make the most of the views, take your turn sitting in one of the open train doorways, with your feet dangling above the track. The final stage from Ella to Badulla is perhaps the most dramatic section of the journey, with some spectacular feats of 19th-century engineering carrying the train across valleys and ravines and around problem outcrops.

Sri Lankan elephants (Elephas maximus maximus) are an endangered species and their survival in their natural habitats is threatened due to human activities. Elephants in the wild are constantly being killed, and many elephant calves become orphaned. In order to support these orphaned elephants, the Department of Wildlife Conservation set up the Elephant Transit Home within Udawalawe National Park. The facility was established under the 29th Amendment to the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance Part II. As of 8 February 2009, 39 orphaned elephant calves were being looked after. The elephant calves are released to the jungle after they become strong enough to survive in their natural habitats. As of 2008, sixty-five elephants had been released to the jungle.