In 1846, when Samuel Baker first visited the semi-enclosed valley surrounded by hills on the west and overlooked by Pidurutalagala, the island’s highest peak, he singled it out as an ideal spot for a hill country retreat. The town flourished into resemble the English country side with a 18 hole golf course (that is one of the oldest in the world today), horse race course, hunting club (which is an exclusive members only club today), parks and more.

This was a favourite hill station of the British and it still retains some distinctive features. The main street is the usual concrete jungle of small shops with the pink post office being an obvious exception. The town center is a busy hub with venders, super markets banks and more. As in many major towns throughout the island, Nuwara Eliya town too suffers from the traffic congestion and hawkers during the weekdays. Weekends are busy too with the market place and the traditional Sunday market.

One of the distinctive features of Baker’s plans was the introduction of European vegetables and

fruit. Flowers are extensively cultivated here for export to Colombo and abroad. The road out of Nuwara Eliya towards Hakgala passes through extensive cultivated fields of vegetables and a short walk up any of the surrounding hillsides shows how far intensive cultivation methods have transformed Nuwara Eliya into one of Sri Lanka’s most productive agricultural areas.

The key to Nuwara Eiya’s prosperity lay in the railway connection from Colombo to the hills. The line was extended from Talawakele to Nanu Oya in 1885, and a very steep narrow guage line right into Nuwara Eliya was opened in 1910, but subsequently closed to passenger traffic in 1940 as buses began to provide effective competition. Today one of the most popular Train journeys in Sri Lanka for tourists is the Peradeniya to Nano Oye route. It offers Sri Lankan holiday makers one of the best scenic rides in the country.

Without the pretensions or political significance of the Rail hill stations in India, Nuwara Eliya nonetheless was an active centre of an English-style social life, with country sports including hunting, polo, cricket and tennis. It has retained all the paraphernalia of a British hill station, with its colonial houses, parks, an 18-hole golf course and trout streams (there are brown trout in the lake for anglers, but this is a rare sight these days). The real clue to its past perhaps lies in its extensive private gardens where dahlias, snap-dragons, petunias and roses grow amongst well-kept lawns.