Thus starts the portion of our program where we are absolutely spoiled by spectacular views. There is no hideous direction to turn. Every angle is postable. I’ve been in Ella for five minutes and have already felt compelled to take the same exact photo fifty times. This is getting ridiculous. I am running out of phone storage.

Ella is a shoddy little backpapcker town with all the usual suspects. Fortunately, we can’t see a smidge of it from our hotel. Like the perfect theater seat, our hotel is perched on an angle so steep that you can’t even see the next hotel below. Nothing impedes the view of the gap created by Ella Peak and Little Adam Peak. It is utterly mezmerising.

Once again we decided to try our luck hiking with a munchkin and once again we were rewarded with alternating bouts of great success and great complaining. Attempts to rekindle the earlier magic of Tilly the mouse were rebuffed. But a meandering discussion about the various poses of Buddha and a serious conversation about whether a whale could live on a mountain proved fruitful. In any case, we made it to the top of Little Adams Peak. Other tourists we impressed.

It was, however, strange to exert so much effort hiking for hours only to discover that the view from your hotel room’s balcony was indeed superior. It’s not a terrible problem to have. But it’s probably quite a common one in Ella, Sri Lanka.