Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

May 29, 2023

2524m

Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka locates on an island in Indian Ocean and Piduruthalagala is the highest peak in this country, boasting over 2500 m prominence and 500 km of isolation. Despite the statistical significance this is just a drive-up with hardly anything worth noting, but this isn’t an “easy” summit to tag due to the complicated logistics. The summit locates inside or beside a military base and one must obtain a permit to visit. I don’t know much about Sri Lanka nor this peak, but Eric passed me the logistics after we both completed our respective Mt. Everest’s trip. I was going to just book a ticket to go home, but I couldn’t resist visiting a new country and bagging another “ultra”. Eric obtained the logistics information from world-leading prominence peak-bagger Petter Bjorstad. The entire planning was a hassle. Without doing any research about this peak I gave my passport’s picture to Eric (who was hiking out near Phakding), and Eric passed my ID to Angelo in Sri Lanka. Angelo replied within 1 day that he got my permit in additional to Eric’s. Angelo later told me that normally at least 4 days or even a week’s required so I was plainly lucky to get on the last-minute ride.

I then booked the SirLankan airline for a direct flight from Kathmandu to Colombo. The direct flight was the only one that made sense. I firstly went onto the airline’s website and the tickets were all sold out for May 28th, but then I went onto Expedia and got my ticket for about 400 dollars. I then booked the homewards, Colombo-to-Seattle flight on May 30th with layovers in Mumbai and London. I didn’t do much research but simply booked the cheapest available. This eventually turned out to be an exhausting journey. Eric bailed the Sri Lanka plan with me because he saw the weather was actually not too bad in Kangchenjunga, but he assured me that with or without him I should have no problem summitting this peak. Eric planned to do Sri Lanka after summitting Kangchenjunga but that climb took a few days longer than he thought, so in the end I was the only one going for Sri Lanka. The temperature in Colombo was unbearably hot and it was also humid. I wanted to just stay inside the hotel but I resisted the temptation to be lazy. I had never seen Indian Ocean so I spent 25 dollars to book a round trip taxi to the beach, about 20 minutes of driving away. I didn’t bother to dip into the sea as the water was looking rather murky, but I did at least touch Indian Ocean.

The next morning Angelo came to my hotel at 5 am but he arrived earlier. I somehow was awake anyway so we left a little bit earlier than planned. Angelo told me the drive would take at least 5 hours each way and we must dodge the horrendous rush-hour traffics. After observing the crowds on the beach in the previous evening I believed him. The temperature was also not crazy hot in the morning that I eventually changed my shorts back to my hiking pants. I also got to experience the roads in Sri Lanka. The entire drive was on paved roads but boy these roads were narrow and curvy. The driving was painfully slow. We stopped for breakfast before the steep ascent to Nuwara Eliya at the base of Piduruthalagala. That town has an elevation of 1800 m and is an ideal place to escape the summer heat. We then drove onto the summit road and soon encountered the gate with military guards. Angelo told me to stay inside the vehicle while he went out to show them our permits. It turned out that I didn’t even need to show my passport nor did they ask me a single question. We then drove through the gate and parked at the highest possible parking lot. They do not allow hiking on this peak as there are some big cats waiting to eat hikers.

The ascent to the high point would only take 5 minutes so I didn’t even bother to change footwear. I simply wore my sandals to the top. En route we had to walk through more gates but there wasn’t any ID checking. Petter apparently had told Angelo that the highest ground is inside the temple and Angelo passed that to me, so I went into the temple as well. I estimated the spot in the temple to be about 20 cm higher than the ground outside. To visit the true highest point I had to take my sandals off and go barefoot. That had something to do with religion that I’m not interested in researching. The view was rather shitty and they didn’t allow us to take pictures of the military towers, so we quickly went down.

I slept through most of the 5-hour drive back to the hotel but Angelo did show me a cool place in Nuwara Eliya with view of our objective. We also had a smoothie in that restaurant. After getting back to the hotel I paid Angelo 200 dollars as agreed earlier and dived back into the room. It was again, unbearably hot near the coast and I had no motivation to go anywhere anymore. On May 30th I flew to Mumbai and planned to go out, bag a peak and check into a hotel as I had 13 hours of layover there. However, I didn’t realize that India requires Canadians to obtain a visa 72 hours ahead and they denied my entry. I wasted 45 dollars on the hotel booking (I always always go with the cheapest booking so it’s usually non-refundable), and I couldn’t get my dot in India. It might not be a bad thing because the ambient air temperature in Mumbai was 38 degrees and I assumed it’d be humid as well. I did need some sleep so checked into a transit hotel inside the airport, paying 160 USD. On May 31st I flew to London and went out to visit the closest town during the 6-hour layover. I had never been to Europe prior to this trip.