Ella - a Victim of Unplanned Tourism Development in Sri Lanka?

Ella a pristine landscape that needs to be protected from commercial exploiters

The general ruling for a place to be recognized as a tourist attraction needs to fulfill three ‘OOS’, they say. There has to be a View-oo with a Loo-oo and a Brew-oo…. It is the Loo and the Brew that one stops over for and it is the View that is got for free.

Ella in the Early Days

Before 1970, Ella was a very small township with hardly any commercial activity except for a few shacks that catered for the railway staff and the few plantation staff who frequented the train to get to Colombo or Badulla and back. It was only a distance of five kilometers from the turnoff at Kumbalwela on the Bandarawela Badulla road. A narrow interior road to Passara via Namunukula that catered to many a tea plantation in Demodara, Uduwara, Spring-valley, Namunukula, and Passara. There was no road to Wellawaya then and the Rawana-fall was hidden in the jungle; a day’s trek to and back in rugged terrain, dared only by the tough.   

Vista from the Ella Rest House - Picture Curtsy Echo Ella

However, there was still one location in Ella that was famous for even then. It was the Rest House which stands to this day in the most pristine location with the best vista. It was the most sort after location by the young honeymooner. This was the era when weddings were a house affair with no hotels for lavish functions but the couple needed a secret hideout for their honeymoon. And for honeymooners, there were those state-run rest houses in the most scenic locations secluded in tranquility. Kithulgala, Belihuloya, Ella, Meegahatenne, was famous as  honeymoon locations among many other locations in Habarana, Polonnaruwa, Thissamaharama, and Dambulla.

Wet Patana Grassland, and Savanna Grasslands.

Sunrise Across the Escarpment 

Ella–Wellawaya Road

This was a development project earmarked as early as 1952 when Major Montague Jayawickrama was the Minister of Transport and Public Works. However, it was only in 1965 when the political climate in the country became stable that these development projects could be implemented. Wellawaya is a major intersection point linking the South and the East with the Uva hills and Nuwara Eliya.  Before the new road came to be the Upper-Uva was linked by a circuitous route via Koslanda – Diyaluma, Meerahawatte to Beragala, and Haputale. Reaching Bandarawela from Haputale was again via Diyatalawa or Welimada. A bus ride that took over 2 hours.  

By 1967 the Survey Department had marked the road trace on the ground and the construction was entrusted to the Sri Lanka Army. This was the time I was schooling at S Thomas’ College Gurutalawa and we were in the habit of exploring the premiere hills in the Uva region. It was while on a hike to Namunukula that we get to know of the proposed road down to Wellawaya from Ella. Our next hike was to traverse along the survey pickets all the way down to Wellawaya through a rugged scrub jungle terrain.

On a long weekend in the month of June 1967 the senior scouts accompanied by Rev: Fr: Harold Goodchild took the task of traversing this distance of approximately 18 Km from Ella to Wellawaya. I remember crossing the Rawana-falls which was a miraculous and a dangerous task when we had to creep behind the waterfall through an overhanging rock crevice that was slippery and dampened. The afternoon was of continuous rain where we encountered wildlife, coming into the open. There was Barking deer, Spotted dear, and Wild-boar with a plentiful Jungle Fowl and Peacocks. Drenched in rain and sweat we reached the Wellawaya Rest House for the night around 7:00 PM totally exhausted after almost 12 hours.

However, it was only in the early 1970s that this road was completed and became motorable; a major link to the Upper Uva area. Ella was now a major intersection point on the motorway more than it was on the railway.

Ella Rest house now turned out to be the famous breakfast/lunch stopover point on the Southern/Upcountry tourist circuit fulfilling the Loo and the Brew with a grand View across the Ella Gap. It was the most sort after lunch stop on the way to Nuwara Eliya from Yala and Udawalawe on the Birdwatching tours in the 2001-2003 era when I was a resource person and bird guiding was technically limited to a few individuals then. However, Ella was still a safe haven to the honeymooner and did continue to be so until about the year 2010.  It was towards the end of 2008 that Elle turned out to be a popular backpacker station thanks to the Travel-guide "Lonely Planet".

By now I was traversing this road once a month to visit my daughter at the Uva-Wellassa University and was able to see the development of the haphazard changes that took place in a five year period.

Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet by this time was reviewing tourism in the region after the devastating Asian Tsunami in 2004. They had now introduced Ella as a very comfortable backpacker location that could be reached by train from Colombo within ten hours. Alongside Ella the Galle Fort was also promoted highlighting as a new tourist attraction within a livable Dutch Fort. This brought about huge development in the Galle Fort when original residents now sold their properties to very lucrative deals and located themselves elsewhere.

Railway Engineering Feats 

Nine Arches  with no tourists around in 2011

With the 30-year war coming to an end in 2009, tourism picked up gradually. However, there was the local traveler also experiencing free movement and the Provincial Tourism Promotion also commenced advocating the unique localities like the Nine Arched Viaduct, and the Looping the Loop on the railway track in Demodara designed to address an impassable gradient to Badulla.

3 Wheeler Taxi at the Nine arches in 2017

But it should be noted that these locations were still in the wilderness even by 2011 when I did go up trekking to the railway line to see the Nine Arches that had no road access even by then. There is much chinwag being uttered today to the unsuspecting traveler on the design and construction of this structure to be the only such on the upcountry railway…. Many do not know that there is also a five arched viaduct structure on the railway close to Rambukkana. However today there is only the center arch visible with the other four built up to a closure probably to cater to a faster track.

Five Arches being built at Rambukkana -Picture Curtsy Sri Lanka Railway Journal 

This was built during the WW1 and steel bridges were not attainable thus they came up with this structure with hired labour. It was D. J. Wimalasurendra, a distinguished Ceylonese engineer and inventor. with the railway designer H. C. Marwood of the Ceylon Railway Construction Department who masterminded this structure and solved the issue with the gradient at Demodara by looping the loop under the Demodara railway station.

I had written about these marvels of Railway Engineering when there was no tourist waiting for a train on the Nine Arches.  Tap the line for the article

Land grabbing is rampant for commercial exploitation

Little Adams Peak or False Adams Peak

This is another attraction more with the local traveler in Ella; a sheer climb across a tea plantation to a viewpoint where there is folklore woven around in the Uva-Wellassa. However, interpretation of this is lost or not known and there has come up a Buddhist shrine today in the most ad-hoc manner trying to exploit the location with false propaganda.     

The story of Little Adam’s Peak is reflected in the book ‘Sinhala Folktales by D P Wickramasinghe’. According to Wickramasinghe, the village Millawa (now Mallahewa) was the central location in the region of Bibile today and this was the same locality the Millawe Dissawe who was succeeded by Keppitipola Dissawe during the Uva Rebellion. The Village Kotagama in Millawa was a very prosperous ancient village and home to many a nobleman with riches. Wickramasinghe discusses a person by the name ‘Kotagama Sitano’ who lived in Kotagama Bibile; a philanthropic nobleman with riches, owning large extents of land in Kotagama. He had a single daughter who inherited all his wealth and through wedlock gave birth to three sons. The folk tale centers around the lady’s final wish to worship “Sri Paada” [Adams peak]. The two elder sons dismiss the request as she was too feeble for the strenuous journey. However, the youngest son replicated a Sri Paada in a location close to Ravana Elle in today’s Ella area and took the mother on a false pilgrimage fulfilling her wish and becomes the sole heir of all the land and the riches but it is said that he later split them equally with his two brothers. So it should be noted that there is no Buddhist lineage to the Little Adam’s Peak in Ella as some hoodwinkers are trying to exploit.

Further to these locations, there are other strenuous hiking routes that are for the fittest and these hikes are more frequented by the backpacker rather than the local traveler. The Ravana Caves situated within the Ravana Falls Sanctuary are administered by the Department of Wildlife Conservation needing special authorization for the visitor with a trained guide.

Tourism and Infrastructure Expansion

With the 30 years war coming to an end in 2009, the country was put on an economic revival. Priority was for tourism where much was expected from. Of course, there was much potential for tourism where Sri Lanka remained a no-go zone for almost thirty years to the world traveler. While the Sun and Sea sector did cater to its clientele, new location as living within the Galle Fort, the vistas of Ella with hiking, visiting other locations of interest in Uva,  and numerous other Wildlife Tourism locations in the Yala and Udawalawe National Parks flourished. Thus new infrastructure for lodging came up in all these locations catering to the influx of tourism which in return provided the much-needed economic growth for the country.

Amongst all these new locations, it was only Ella that had a very limited buildable land area for expansion. The topo-geography of Ella had its own limitation for expanding infrastructure. However, with the Homestay Concept introduced as a means to accommodate the ever-increasing demand for rooms, Ella took it in a big way to cater to the backpacker looking for low-cost comfort. 

Ella another victim of development

Today Ella has turned out to be the Narigama of Hikkaduwa then in the 1970s; the first victim of tourism development. This unplanned, misused and mismanaged tourist locality in Hikkaduwa with a pristine beachfront was disparaged in society; thought to have impacted the social structure very much. Finally, it was the 2004 Asian Tsunami that put everything there into disarray.   

Ella today could be highlighted as the second victim in this type of unplanned tourism development in the country. Ella's environment has been raped of its natural vegetation during the last decade [2010-2020]. Uva Province has the highest diversity of natural vegetation in the country and eleven out of fourteen major natural vegetation types are represented in Ella. Ella and it's immediate cater to at least seven of these eleven types.  The Moist Mixed Evergreen Forests, Mid-elevational Evergreen Forests, Montane Evergreen Forests, Dry Riverine Evergreen Forests, Dry Patana Grasslands, Wet Patana Grassland, and Savanna Grasslands.

The haphazard land grabbing for construction has contributed to the depletion of the continuance of those once green hills and valley that were only cut across by a road linking the Dry Lower Uva with the Wet Upper Uva. The streams are now getting polluted with the effluent from the massive construction taking place that is very vulnerably founded on unstable ground. The already discussed road is also a victim of the development with excessive runoff from the hillside contributing to sliding land that makes the road impassable for days during the rainy season.

Mountains that should be kept out of human activity are full of trespass with numerous Buddhist temples coming up on these hilltops tempting people to go up regularly. The question today is can Ella cater to this many people and the bubble is almost about to explode. We now note the Urban Development Authority (UDA) to have published a Development Program for Ella after much of its regulations have been blatantly violated. The limitation of building heights to three stories is a clear violation while the prohibition to build on inclines over 45 degrees is not heeded. It is so strange that the Local Authority who is also the regulatory body in this regard turns a blind eye, while their repositories swelled from the taxes and the revenue collected.

UDA Development Plan for Ella [2019-2030]   

This document is now available to the public which is yet to be implemented, spell out the gravity of the problem in Ella. There are over 600 hotels and guest houses now in Ella within an approximate area of 5.6 square kilometers. And the immediate problem is the availability of safe water. The daily water demand for these facilities is an enormous 1,861,860 liters per day. And it is noted that the combination of the Local Authority the National Water Board and the numerous other shallow wells can only supply 917,500 liters accounting for a 50% shortfall. There is no proper wastewater and sewerage water disposable system accounting for leachate and surface flow escaping to waterbodies that end up in the Kirindi-Oya.   

Section of Google Maps showing Hotels and Lodges in Ella Today

The six tons of solid waste collected in a day are deposited in an open dump at Kithalella. The gravity of the situation is dubious and they continue to dump on a private land of mere 15 perches in extent alongside the main road to Demodara.

This haphazard manner in the growth of the tourist industry is accounted for the far excessive number of lodges and hotels that came up violating the regulatory mechanism obstructing the very same vistas and the scenery that Ella is frequented for and is famous for. Thus the need for a development plan to mitigate and control these unauthorized buildings and structures of many that need to be demolished is a question for the urban planner and a problem to the local politician.  

Ella Town which is situated in an environmentally sensitive zone loaded with so much infrastructure for tourism has generated a grave vulnerability towards earth slips and shifting soils which if goes unchecked would turn out to be another catastrophe much similar to the 2004 Asian Tsunami that struck Narigama in Hikkaduwa.    

udithawijesena@gmail.com