Skip to content
Harry Jaggard Travel Wiki

Video

I Didn’t Expect This In Sri Lanka 🇱🇰

· 16 min · Watch on YouTube

Play: I Didn’t Expect This In Sri Lanka 🇱🇰

I Didn’t Expect This In Sri Lanka 🇱🇰

The last full day in Ella before the transfer to Colombo, and it is a short one: a zipline, a coconut, and a long Western lunch. With Mac and Ali, who is badly afraid of heights and comes anyway.

Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles.

The zipline

The Flying Ravana Mega Zipline, on the walk out of town, and the numbers are the useful part.

  • 550 metres long, run side by side so two people go at once.
  • 4,000 rupees — about $20.
  • A GoPro is allowed, and Harry uses one.
  • The lift back to the top is free, which he reads correctly as an inducement to buy a second run.
  • The same site offers ATV riding, mountain biking, air rifle shooting, abseiling and archery.
  • Around 25°C, sunny with a breeze — the best weather of the hill section.

An operator tells him he has run ziplines something like three thousand times. Harry’s comparison is with a zipline off the 43rd floor of a building in Dubai, and he rates this one higher.

Ali does it with his eyes shut. Harry, who has spent the trip talking about comfort zones, makes a point of saying that for someone with a genuine fear of heights this is a much bigger thing than it was for the other two.

The king coconut

An orange coconut, opened with a machete at a roadside stand: 100 rupees, about 50 cents. His verdict is that it tastes much like a green one but less sweet, which he thinks makes it the easier drink for anyone who doesn’t much like coconut — and there is far more liquid in it than he expects, as usual.

Getting around, and the wi-fi

  • A tuk-tuk up to the zipline: 300 rupees. On the way back the driver tries a higher number, Harry calls him cheeky, and it gets settled with a joke. He also gets to drive the tuk-tuk for a stretch.
  • The best internet he finds in the country is in a restaurant: 61 down, 39 up. His own line is that finding good wi-fi in Sri Lanka is like finding a needle in a haystack, and this comes after a whole day of looking. See book for the wi-fi when you work on the road.

Lunch

Western food, which he says he needs after a fortnight of curry: penne, a pizza and a burger with drinks, 5,100 rupees for three — about $25. The penne was billed as spicy and isn’t, which he takes as evidence his tolerance is finally building.

Key moments

  • [00:00] Walking out past the trail he calls Adam’s Peak.
  • [01:00] The site, and everything else it offers.
  • [02:32] 4,000 rupees, and 550 metres.
  • [04:12] Three thousand ziplines.
  • [05:44] Ali at the top.
  • [06:57] Better than Dubai.
  • [08:01] The free lift back up, and why it’s free.
  • [08:32] A king coconut for 100 rupees.
  • [10:36] Driving the tuk-tuk, and the fare that goes up on the way back.
  • [11:54] 61 down, 39 up — the best in the country.
  • [14:59] 5,100 rupees for three Western meals.

Extracted pages