Avoiding the Fighting that Never Was

After climbing Adam’s Peak we began our two day journey to Arugam Bay, located on the politically unstable east coast of the country. We had been told that it was amazing, untouched, completely safe and a must-see destination. However, on the first night off our journey while staying in Ella we encountered a fellow traveler who told us that the day before there was a strike against a rebel leader in that town. As such, soldiers were hiding out in the forests surrounding the town and it was unsafe to go to.

We verified the attack and let my worries stop us from going on anyway, a decision that we would later regret once we read more and realized that we would have been just fine. We wound up spending another day relaxing in Ella, which is a town with one real road that just got electricity in 1984. The road is geared towards tourists and there really is not much to do. Our one activity was  taking a bus to a waterfall then walking back along the highway next to the stunning Ella Gap for 6km. To this day we both wish we had never met the guy who told us about the attack.