Nuwara Eliya - Gartmore
- August 17, 2019, 3:45 am
- Blog, Waterfall
- 0 Comments
The morning was a blessing to witness at The Hideout but now it was time to leave. The journey and things to do were over as far as we were concerned but then one of our colleagues put out this idea at that we have enough time to visit somewhere. So we picked a place that was seemingly on our way home. That place was the Gartmore falls. But little did we know that we would run in to maybe the best place we did throughout the journey. Gartmore was without a doubt a completely bewildering place, it is one of the most scenic places we have ever been to and what's more interesting is that it is one of the places that is not polluted by the tourists, it remains pure to the date, of course, the locals have been there but it is not a household name. “Gartmore” doesn’t ring the same as “Ella” or “Meemure” or anything else.
The one thing that I have kept vague throughout this article is the place as Gartmore simply isn’t one place. We found this out the hard way as we have mentioned earlier the place we wanted to visit earlier was Gartmore Falls and my friend insisted that it is located somewhere in the Gartmore. The google map became our best friend and set out on our journey, from Nuwara Eliya we went to Hatton and then set out the destination to Gartmore estate via Maskeliya. The road to our destination becomes extremely rural so much so that you’d think you are lost, which is exactly what we thought however fear not you are in the right path. The roads will keep getting more broken and incomplete and make it harder to travel but the surrounding environment will become more and more beautiful. The greenery from the tea estates was astounding. This was the most scenic views have ever been throughout our journey, and I would go as far as to say, maybe my whole life. Then we passed a small junction and went straight to the Gartmore Estate.
The road became more and more broken once we started to go deeper in to the estate and at one point we realized we couldn’t go by our car and we also realised that none of us had any idea where we are or whether we are on the right path but the view is still breathtakingly beautiful, the Gartmore estate itself and the huge skyscraping mountains and many waterfalls it accompanied were jaw-dropping and too big and massive in scale to be captured in any of our lenses, this is just the view we are talking about. The walk along the roads at Gartmore was also a special experience then we asked a van that happened to go our way and realized this is not the right path, he informed that the way to go to the Gartmore falls was at the junction previously mentioned, apparently there is a road that leads there and he also revealed something else. And that was that we were indeed heading somewhere even better and that is Gawarawila plains. It is apparently on top of the mountain that was home for the numerous waterfalls which were mentioned before. The name won’t be mentioned here because it is a truly marvelous place and we believe it should be preserved for as long as possible however if you are really interested this article has already provided enough information as to how to reach there.
The next obvious step was to go to the junction and find our way. Hence why asked the only shop owner how to reach there. The shop owner was nice enough to let us know how to reach there and reaffirmed the place that was mentioned before. From the junction, the other (seemingly) main road (there aren’t many) led to a small walkthrough that leads into a massive tea estate. We slowly trod through this path as our guide, the shop owner, said and as he mentioned the waterfall should be seemingly close by however we didn’t see it anywhere so doubted it and there wasn’t anyone in the vicinity except some locals, but fear not this is actually the right path. There is saying that “It’s about the journey, not the destination” and this encapsulates our journey to find Gartmore falls. At the halfway point, we found a hut and rested, at that point we didn’t know it of course however there was a noticeable difference until this point and that was the road after this point was through small footpaths and was less clear, in fact from this point onward we had to find our way. This was especially hard because we are yet to see the waterfall itself, but after walking for 20 or 30m more from the hut the waterfall finally decided to reveal itself. Finally we have a destination, from this point onwards it is about finding your way there and this was hard, for a moment we thought there was no road to get close to it and gave up but eventually, we did find our way and it was brilliant.
The waterfall itself was not as majestic as the previous waterfalls Aberdeen and Luxapana however it was the most remote and the most rewarding of them all. The road that led to this place was absolutely brilliant and gave us some of the most beautiful scenery throughout our journey. After enjoying this we left for home ending our trip to remember. If someone asked now which is our best recommendation from our whole journey I would say go to Gartmore estate and the falls.