The central highlands of Sri Lanka, in my opinion, one of the most prettiest places in Asia, when we look at the map of this country, the magnificent lush green areas in the middle of the tear drop shaped island are really attractive and full of many places to discover from the famous multi-religious holy site of Adam’s Peak (Sri Pada) to the tea plantations of world famous Ceylon tea.

As a usual tourist, I started my trip to central highlands from the holy city of Kandy, another WHS and home of the sacred tooth relic, which actually located under the shadow of Knuckles Range, a part of this WHS. The road from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya was just breathtaking with beautiful mountain landscape, lakes, and countless tea plantations; sometimes I still reminded the taste of chocolate cake and a cup of silver tip white tea I had while watching the waterfall, a perfect holiday. At night from the colonial villa hotel in the middle of tea plantations, I saw Sri Pada flooding with lights for pilgrims while hearing the Buddhist chanting from nearby temple, a real spiritual inspiration.

As you may noticed the prime attractions of the highlands were not natural heritage, but the cultural ones, when WHC decided to inscribe this place as a WHS on natural merit made me have to look back and from my experience, I found that the highlands were beautiful tropical mountain jungles but nothing significant enough to be WHS, actually if you have a chance to read IUCN report, they recommended to inscribe the highlands as serial extensions with Sinharaja to fully represented this island biodiversity in the list of WHS.

Anyway, I really enjoyed my trip in the highlands and highly recommended this place really deserved to be visited despite having the UNESCO label or not. Also try to visit the eastern part of Peak Wilderness area with beautiful cliff, lush jungle, and lovely lakes and waterfalls – a Garden of Eden of Sri Lanka.