The Kandy-to-Ella Train: Our Fabulous First-Class Ride!
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The Kandy-to-Ella train is hailed as one of the world’s most beautiful train trips – and riding it was a highlight of our visit to Sri Lanka.
The 7-hour adventure takes you from the city of Kandy (a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Cultural Triangle region) – through an emerald-green landscape of tea plantations, misty mountains and tiny villages – to the chill town of Ella in the cool highlands.
We reserved 1st class tickets in advance (recommended). Think comfy seats, air-conditioning and clean Western-style loos.
Best of all, traveling first class didn’t mean missing out on the fun open-door experience. We could still (carefully!) hang out an open train door and soak up those iconic views!
Here’s our complete guide on the train experience – including the differences between the three ticket classes (and why first class is worth it!) plus how to snag your tickets.
Kandy-to-Ella train at a glance
All aboard!
- Travel time – Allow at least 7 hours
- Ticket price – About $9 USD p.p. for 1st class reserved seats through Sri Lanka Railways, or roughly $20 to $30 USD p.p. through 12Go
- Departure times – Two morning express trains, typically around 8:47 am and 11:10 am
- Best class – First class, for air conditioning, padded assigned seats with tray tables and Western-style flush toilets
Booking your train tickets
We recommend getting your tickets through 12Go for easy, convenient advance booking.🚂
Don’t miss this in Kandy!
When exploring Kandy, make time for the fascinating Temple of the Sacred Tooth.
Sleep in style in Ella
- 98 Acres Resort & Spa – Thatched-roof chalets (some with private pools) and jaw-dropping mountain views
- Nine Skies – A 1920s tea planter’s bungalow with 5 rooms, all-inclusive dining and butler-served sundowners
2026 Update! Trains start at Nanu Oya
A 2025 cyclone badly damaged Sri Lanka’s hill-country railway, and the Kandy section of the route remains closed. The full Kandy-to-Ella route is expected to be back up and running by early 2027.
The good news?
The famously scenic train ride is still running – just on a shorter route, between Nanu Oya and Ella (and beyond to Badulla), as of June 20, 2026.
Taking the train from Nanu Oya
Nanu Oya is a little railway hamlet about a 2½- to 3-hour drive from Kandy. It’s also the closest train station to the lovely hill-country town of Nuwara Eliya. (Jump to our train stops section for more.)
- Getting there from Kandy – You can take a taxi to Nanu Oya, or, if you’re touring Sri Lanka with a car and driver, have your driver drop you at the station.
- Train time to Ella – It’s about 2½ hours (plus another 60 to 90 minutes if you continue to Badulla). Best of all, you get what’s arguably the most spectacular stretch of the entire journey!
- Cost – First-class reserved seats from Nanu Oya to Ella cost around $10 USD p.p. through 12Go. (Check the latest schedule on Sri Lanka Railways.)
Or make a day of it from Kandy!
You can turn the journey into a fabulous day trip.
This 8-hour private tour picks you up from your Kandy hotel and takes you to Nuwara Eliya, then to the Nanu Oya station.
Along the way, visit the spectacular 358-foot Ramboda Waterfall and a tea factory. Then board the train with reserved 2nd- or 3rd-class seats for the stunning ride to Ella.
Contents: Riding the train in first class from Kandy to Ella
Rolling through Sri Lanka’s tea country
Sri Lanka Railways is the country’s national railway.
Dating back to 1864, the railway was originally built by the British to haul tea and coffee from the inland hill country to Colombo. Today, trains trundle all over the island, linking the capital with many of Sri Lanka’s major destinations.
Its most famous journey is the train ride between Kandy and Ella, cutting through the heart of Sri Lanka’s ridiculously scenic hill country.
We were glued to the views from the start.
Not long after leaving Kandy, we chugged past rice paddies and pine forests. Then came the tea country – lush green plantations rolling across the hillsides.
We watched as tea pickers, green woven baskets strapped to their backs, moved slowly among tea plants like upright turtles.
The higher we climbed, the mistier it got. Wisps of white mist curled through wild jasmine spilling over bushes and trees, giving everything a dreamy, almost otherworldly look.
There really wasn’t a dull stretch!
Our first-class ride
We booked first-class seats on our popsicle blue train – one of the older blue trains plying the route. (Depending on what’s running that day, you could find yourself aboard a newer red one instead.)
Now don’t think “first class” like you’d experience on a train in Europe. Sri Lankan first class is a rather more modest affair. But we did get air conditioning, assigned padded seats and – not insignificant on a seven-hour train journey – Western-style flush toilets.
Still, mashing our noses against glass windows wasn’t nearly as much fun as standing in the vestibule at the end of the carriage, where fresh mountain air whooshed through the open doorway.
So that’s where we spent a good chunk of the journey.
Gripping the grab bars tightly, we gleefully leaned out the open train door as tea plantations and misty green hills rolled past.
Some passengers were braver than us and sat on the floor with their legs dangling outside, as we clackety-clacked through hills ribboned with rows of tea plants.
Our train pulled into Ella late in the afternoon.
At the station, a tuk-tuk driver whisked us to our Ella hotel – where we checked in just in time to catch a brilliant sunset.
First class vs. second and third class
You’ll hear lots of people say you shouldn’t book first class tickets for this trip (or the reverse Ella-to-Kandy train ride).
They argue you won’t get the “real” experience – that you’ll be locked in an air-conditioned carriage with other foreigners, and the windows don’t open. They say you should travel in second or even third class.
We beg to differ.
So what are second and third class like?
Neither class has air conditioning.
That’s not necessarily a big deal in second class, because the windows open and you can poke your head out for the breeze. Still, the carriage can get warm and muggy.
Third class is more basic, with bench seating. And in the unreserved carriages, seating tends to be a “free for all” on wooden benches! We wouldn’t wish to sit on those benches for a long train ride.
In both second and third class, you can book reserved seats.
Or you can take your chances with an unreserved ticket bought at the Kandy train station. But with a third-class ticket, you might have to stand for hours – assuming you manage to squeeze aboard in the first place!
Then there are the toilets. Second- and third-class carriages generally have squat toilets, and you’ll want to bring your own toilet paper.
For a 7-hour ride? We’ll take first class, thanks.
Why we’d pick first class again
Here’s the important bit: You don’t have to travel second or third class to hang out the train door!
At least, we didn’t.
The vestibule area at the end of our first-class carriage – where passengers get on and off – wasn’t locked and was accessible throughout the whole journey. And its exterior door was open. We could come and go from that vestibule and our seat as we pleased.
So we got the best of both worlds.
When we wanted that heads-out-the-train experience, we headed to the open doorway, breathed in the cool mountain air and watched those gorgeous tea-covered hills roll by.
And when we’d had enough wind in our hair, we wandered back to our assigned seats and chilled out in air-conditioned comfort.
Plus, did we mention the Western-style loos?
Bottom line? Our advice is to go 1st class.
Train schedule and stops
You can check the latest timetable on the official Sri Lanka Railways website.
Kandy-to-Ella train schedule
There are usually two government-run daytime express trains running daily from Kandy to Ella:
- First daytime train – Leaves a little before 9:00 am (typically scheduled at 8:47 am)
- Second daytime train – Leaves a little after 11:00 am (typically scheduled at 11:10 am)
(There’s also a much slower overnight option, along with special tourist trains on certain days.)
Officially, the journey is supposed to take about 6½ hours.
But in reality, the trains are notoriously late, with delays common along the route. So a 3:15 pm scheduled arrival in Ella (for the first train) can easily turn into 4:00 or 4:30 pm – or later.
Tip: Take the earlier train
We recommend booking the first train.
Apart from giving you more daylight for those gorgeous hill-country views, it gets you into Ella earlier – and we always like arriving somewhere new while there’s still enough light to get our bearings.
Take the later train, and you could arrive after dark.
Main train stops
The train makes many stops, but these are the main ones of interest to travelers:
- Kandy – Starting point for this journey
- Hatton – For Adam’s Peak and the Castlereagh Reservoir tea country
- Nanu Oya – The railway station for Nuwara Eliya, known for its misty green hills, British colonial cottages and rose gardens
- Haputale – For Lipton’s Seat and the surrounding tea country
- Ella – The major tourist stop
- Badulla – The end of the line
Buying your train tickets
The train from Kandy to Ella is wildly popular, and reserved seats sell out fast – especially in peak season. So if you want to be sure of snagging a seat, it pays to book ahead.
Here are the three main ways to buy your tickets, plus one more option worth knowing about.
1) Buy at the train station
You can buy an unreserved ticket at the station on the day of travel. It’s the cheapest option and perfectly doable if you arrive early and are happy to go with the flow. But there’s no guarantee you’ll get a seat.
We wouldn’t recommend leaving it to chance. You’ve planned the rest of your Sri Lanka trip – you might as well plan your train ride too!
2) Buy online through Sri Lanka Railways
You can book reserved seats directly through Sri Lanka Railways using using their official seat reservation page.
The downside? The website isn’t particularly user-friendly. There’s no handy calendar showing availability, so you have to check individual dates to find one showing a green “Available” status.
And you can only book up to 30 days before your journey.
3) Buy online through 12Go
This is how we booked our Kandy-to-Ella train tickets.
12Go is a well-established online booking agency selling train, bus and ferry tickets around the world, including Sri Lanka.
Enter Kandy and Ella (or your preferred stations), along with your travel date, and the available options will pop up.
One advantage is that you can request tickets through 12Go more than 30 days ahead.
Getting your 12Go tickets
Pay attention to the instructions that come with your booking, as the ticket process varies.
- E-ticket – Many bookings now come with an e-ticket (and QR code) that you can use directly at the station.
- Printed ticket – Some bookings are for an original paper railway ticket. You can have it delivered to your hotel in Sri Lanka (for $8 USD) or collect it from 12Go’s partner office in Colombo.
12Go has no control over whether they get e-tickets (which they can email to you) or actual paper tickets.
We received a PDF voucher a month before our planned train ride, rather than e-tickets with a QR code – meaning we still had to collect the actual paper tickets.
We chose the second option of personally picking up the train tickets in Colombo, as we wanted to make absolutely sure we’d actually get our hands on these highly coveted tickets!
So the first day after arriving in Colombo, we took a taxi to the Stef Lanka Pvt Ltd. travel agency office (12Go’s partner), shown on the ticket voucher emailed to us in advance.
We found it a bit difficult to find the actual office in the commercial mall (#17, Ground Floor, Welikada Plaza, Parliament Road) and we wondered if we were in the right place. But we persisted – the office does exist!
And it was all quite amusingly old-school when we got there. The agent had to riffle through a wooden box to find the envelope with our tickets.
Ticket cost
Expect to pay roughly $20 to $30 USD p.p. through 12Go, depending on the train and class. We paid a little over $20 USD each for our first-class Kandy-to-Ella tickets.
Book early
Sri Lanka Railways releases reserved seats 30 days before departure.
With 12Go, you can put in your request earlier. We recommend doing so at least two months ahead for the train to Ella.
Once seats are released by Sri Lanka Railways, they’re immediately snatched up by tour companies and agencies like 12Go – which then turn around and resell them to you (at an extra cost, of course).
Reserving with 12Go well in advance gives them time to buy tickets for you as soon as Sri Lanka Railways put them on sale.
Tip: Be flexible
If 12Go gives you a “flexible” option, choose it.
If first class is sold out, the agent can try to secure second-class reserved seats instead. This way, you’ll at least have seats – and you should be refunded the difference.
4) Book online through Viator or GetYourGuide
You can also book 1st and 2nd class train tickets through Viator or GetYourGuide (GYG) – two of the largest international online day-tour booking sites.
(We’ve used both for tours and day trips around the world and, apart from a couple of minor hiccups that were satisfactorily resolved, we’ve had great experiences with them.)
Essentially, you’re buying from a local Sri Lankan tour or travel agency that secures tickets from Sri Lanka Railways (when reserved seats are released 30 days ahead), with Viator or GYG acting as the middleman.
A couple of options with the highest reviews
- Kandy to Nuwara Eliya (by car) then train to Ella – This roughly 8-hour private tour picks you up from your Kandy hotel and includes visits to a spectacular waterfall and tea factory, before you board the train for Ella. You get reserved 2nd or 3rd class seats.
- First-class train tickets from Kandy to Ella – A straightforward ticket-booking option – head to the station, collect your tickets and board. Note: While repairs continue on part of the railway, a complimentary shuttle from Kandy to Nanu Oya (the station for Nuwara Eliya) is included.
These options are usually pricier than booking through 12Go. But, hey, it’s good to have options, right?
Tips for riding the train
Sit on the best side for the most beautiful views
If you have a choice:
- Kandy to Nanu Oya – Sit on the right for sweeping views of rolling hills and lush tea plantations. (The left side tends to hug cliffs and dense vegetation.)
- Nanu Oya to Ella – Aim for the left if you can. (But it matters less on this stretch, as both sides dish up gorgeous scenery.)
Of course, if the carriage is full, you may not have much choice. But there’s still plenty to see from both sides along the way.
Bring snacks and drinks
We’d be warned to stock up on bottled water and snacks, so we bought pre-packaged cheese puffs and lemon cookies at the Kandy station.
As it turns out, vendors hop aboard at different stops selling all sorts of goodies – freshly roasted peanuts, mandarin oranges, cans of Pringles and even samosas.
You should still bring your own food and drinks with you, so you have what you want. But you’re unlikely to starve if you don’t.
Travel a shorter leg
If 7+ hours on a train sounds like too much, you can still experience the best of Sri Lanka’s hill-country railway on a shorter stretch.
Option 1: Nanu Oya to Ella
Break up the journey in Nanu Oya. From Kandy, the train ride takes roughly 4 hours.
Spend a couple of days exploring Nuwara Eliya – the charming tea-country town often dubbed “Little England” – then hop back on the train for the scenic ride to Ella.
Option 2: Ella to Badulla
For an even shorter taste, take an early morning train from Ella to Badulla, the end of the line, then catch a train back later that morning. (There are usually three morning trains returning to Ella).
Along the way, you’ll rumble over the famous Nine Arch Bridge, also known as the “Bridge in the Sky.” Completed in 1921 during the British colonial era, the beautiful stone viaduct rises 80 feet above the valley between Ella and Demodara.
The one-way trip takes roughly an hour to 90 minutes – a fun little train adventure without giving up most of your day.
Where to stay in Ella?
You’ll want to stay at least two nights in the laid-back village of Ella.
There’s plenty to keep you busy – from hiking Ella Rock and Little Adam’s Peak to visiting Diyaluma Falls (Sri Lanka’s second-tallest waterfall) and touring a tea factory.
We also loved simply escaping Sri Lanka’s searing heat for Ella’s cooler hills – and relaxing by the pool, soaking up those idyllic green views.
98 Acres Resort & Spa
Perched on a scenic tea estate, 98 Acres Resort & Spa is one of the most delightful Sri Lanka hotels – and an eco-luxury gem. It’s the sister hotel to the one we stayed at (now closed).
Built from recycled materials, its thatch-roofed chalets blend beautifully into the lush hillside, with knockout mountain views. Some even come with private plunge pools.
You’re also right by the trail to Little Adam’s Peak. And there’s an inviting freeform pool to relax by.
It’s romantic and perfect for nature-loving couples. Just be prepared for lots of steps!
Nine Skies
For a more exclusive hill-country hideaway, Nine Skies is a beautifully restored 1920s tea planter’s bungalow. Part of the upscale Teardrop Hotels collection and featured in the MICHELIN Guide, it’s a 15-minute drive from Ella.
It has five bedrooms – most with four-poster king beds – plus an infinity pool. You can also hike about 2½ miles through the hills to the Nine Arches Bridge.
Rates are all-inclusive, covering meals, snacks and drinks – including butler-served sundowners in the garden or by the crackling log fire.
Is the train ride from Kandy to Ella worth it?
Absolutely. It’s famous for a reason. Getting there really is half the fun – actually the journey is the whole point! (Mind you, spending time around Ella makes for a pretty fabulous finale).
For the most comfortable ride, we recommend going 1st class.
You can also take the train in reverse, from Ella to Kandy.
Whichever way you go, settle in and enjoy the trip. It was a highlight of our time in Sri Lanka!
See our other Sri Lanka travel guides
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→ General trip planning: TripAdvisor is a helpful starting point, with loads of user reviews on hotels, restaurants and things to do.
→ Hotels: Booking.com is our go-to for scoring a “wow” hotel – or at least a decent one – often at lower rates than the hotel’s own website. (We especially like Booking.com’s flexible cancellation policy!) You can also find excellent discounted rates on Expedia, especially for hotels in the U.S. and Mexico.
→ Vacation homes, condos and rentals: We prefer and use Vrbo (Vacation Rentals by Owner).
→ Flights: For the best flights, we search on Google Flights first. Expedia and Kayak are then perfect for snagging the cheapest tickets. (They’re often non-refundable, though, so for more flexibility, we book directly with the airline, even if it costs more.)
→ Airport lounge access: We love (and have) Priority Pass for comfy lounge seats, free snacks and drinks, complimentary WiFi and sometimes even showers and spa services!
→ Tours: For the best local food, walking and other guided tours, plus skip-the-line tickets to attractions, check out Viator (a TripAdvisor company) and GetYourGuide.
→ Car rental: Renting a car can be a great way to explore off the beaten path. Discover Cars searches car rental companies for the lowest rates.
→ Travel insurance: SafetyWing is designed for frequent travelers, long-term adventurers and digital nomads. It covers medical expenses, lost checked luggage, trip interruption and more. We also have and recommend Medjet for global air medical transportation.
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Photo credits: 4 to 7, 10 © Janice and George Mucalov, SandInMySuitcase
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