Changes in the beautiful town of Nuwara Eliya

View of the Post-Office

Daddy said the Post Office in Nuwara Eliya seems to be about the only land mark building untouched by so called development. The township was teeming with van loads of people, especially young men behaving more like hoodlums who had never seen a woman in their lives. The shops seemed straight off the streets of Pettah. There were shops for sarees, gold jewellery, electronic equipment and loads more, bringing the hustle and bustle of Colombo right into Nuwara Eliya, all spewing out loud music in their efforts to drown out everything else.

There is this huge bus stand slap-bang in the middle of town, with its own cacophony of noise with bus conductors and vendors calling out at the top of their lungs, not to mention the droning of bus engines and blaring of horns. The double storied building housing rows of little shops is the view you get from what once used to be entrance of the park.

In my opinion, most people go to Nuwara Eliya to experience Nuwara Eliya, its untouched charm, tea estates and its lovely climate. We seem to have made the mistake of creating another Colombo there. The beautiful charm is now replaced by spanking new buildings, several stories high to accommodate the huge influx of people who come in flocks, flood the city, ruin the serene calm with their raucous noise and leave the township to deal with tons of polythene, garbage and diesel fumes with very little resources to clean it up with.

Trees have been chopped down and everyone seems to be falling over themselves in their hurry to make money by putting up large ugly flats painted in garish colours which certainly do NOT merge into the beauty of the hill country. Huge hoardings deface the very mountain sides. Instead of awesome rolling hills the view is marred by buildings and boards.

I don’t know whether it was just this weekend, but the Nuwara Eliya was actually HOT. The ‘little England’ atmosphere was certainly gone along with most of its quaint charm.