Walking Sri Lanka’s Pekoe Trail: 300 Kilometres Through the Tea Country

Until a few years ago, travellers saw Sri Lanka’s hill country from a train window or a car. The Pekoe Trail has made it possible to cross it on foot. It is the island’s first long-distance walking route: about 300 kilometres in 22 stages, through the tea estates of the central highlands.

The route

The trail begins at Hanthana, in the hills above Kandy, near the Ceylon Tea Museum. It runs south through Galaha to Loolkandura, where the Scottish planter James Taylor established the island’s first commercial tea estate in 1867. From there it continues to the estate towns around Hatton, climbs towards Horton Plains, follows the southern escarpment through Haputale to Ella, and turns north again to end at Nuwara Eliya, the old British hill station.

The path was not cut for walkers. It follows tracks that already existed: the cart roads built in the nineteenth century to take tea down to the railway, footpaths between estate villages, and in places the railway line itself. The name comes from a grade of black tea.

How it works

Each stage is around 12 kilometres and takes three to six hours. The gradients are gentle by the standards of mountain walking, since carts had to manage them, though the full route involves more than 10,000 metres of ascent. Stages begin and end at places a vehicle can reach, so they can be walked singly, with a driver waiting at the far end. Very few visitors walk all 22. Most choose two to four.

The first section opened in 2021 and the trail was launched as a whole in 2023, with waymarking completed stage by stage since. Walkers are asked to buy a trail pass, sold by stage, and an official app carries maps and the current state of each section. Open stages, prices and rules change, so check the official Pekoe Trail website before you go. The trail’s organisers publish a notice for each stage, called Trail Watch, and at times place stages under advisory or alert after heavy rain. It should be checked before setting out.

Which stages

The stages near Ella are the best known and the busiest. They pass the Nine Arch Bridge and Ella Rock and are easy to combine with the train journey through the tea country. The opening stages near Kandy are quieter and suit a first morning in the hills. The stages around Hatton and Bogawantalawa cross the estates where the planters’ bungalows have become small hotels. The section towards Horton Plains is the highest and wildest.

What you see

Tea covers almost every slope. The bushes are picked by hand, mostly by women of the Tamil community whose ancestors were brought from southern India to work the estates. The trail passes their villages and temples, the factories where the leaf is withered and rolled, and patches of cloud forest that the plantations left standing. One purpose of the route is to bring income to these communities, through homestays, guiding and small cafés.

When to go

The highlands are walkable all year, but the two sides of the hills have different rainy seasons. January to April is the most reliable period overall. Long stretches have no shade, so an early start matters. Leeches appear after rain.

Fitting it into a journey

The trail combines well with the rest of Sri Lanka. A common plan is to begin with the temples of Kandy, perhaps after a few days at a retreat such as Santani, walk for three or four days between estate bungalows, and then go down to the south coast and the leopards of Yala, where Wild Coast Tented Lodge stands between the jungle and the sea.