A Quick Guide to Horton Plains Campsites

Year and Month	January, 2014
Number of Days	3 Nights and 4 Days
Crew	3 Guys (between 25-30 years of age)
Accommodation	Camping – Horton Plains Campsite 3
Transport	Jeep – Alternatively, you could take the Badulla Train and get off at Pattipola. (more details below)
Activities	Camping, Trekking, Photography & Relaxing
Weather	Good Clear Weather on Daytime. It Rained on two nights but overall manageable weather.
Route	Colombo -> Awissawella -> Dehiowita -> Karawanella -> Kitulgala -> Ginigathhena -> Hatton -> Thalawakele -> Nanu-Oya -> Ambewela -> Pattipola -> Pattipola Entrance – Horton Plains National Park (approximately 200km)
Tips, Notes and Special remark	All campsites are located within around 500ms from the Horton Plains Wildlife Centre and all sites consist of a permanent toilet (squatting) and garbage disposal facilities. If you have a lot of equipment to carry its best to get there before afternoon so you can setup your camp and be prepared for any weather changes. No plastics or polythene is allowed within the park, the officers at the gate would check your bags occasionally but are not that strict, in any case if you bring any plastics please make sure to dispose them accordingly at the garbage pit at the site, don’t leave them scattered in the campsite. Nights in Horton Plains will get really cold, so make sure that you take enough warm clothes including socks and warm gloves if possible. Make sure to take a raincoat, as it rains often, you would at least get caught in a small drizzle. You are not allowed to make campfires, but the officers would not come to check on it at night but it its advised to take a gas-cooker to cook food ( with smaller gas cyclinder) as it is harder to make fires with the constant mist and rain. Don’t shout and sing very loudly disturbing the peacefulness. When we camped there was another group who were singing very loudly disturbing visitors and were evacuated by the Wildlife Officials. – respect nature…
Related Resources	Attraction: Horton Plains (Maha-Eliya) – Heaven on Earth, 2100m Above Sea Level Discussion: Contact Numbers of Forest Department and Wildlife Deparment for Reservations
Author	NaveenM
Comments	Discuss this trip report, provide feedback or make suggestions at Lakdasun Forum on the thread A Quick Guide to Horton Plains Campsites

We recently concluded our camping trip to the campsite 3 in Horton Plains and spent 3 nights and four days. We have camped at sites 1 and 2 before and when we wanted to book site 3, we didn’t really know if these were better than the others, so decided to include a small comparison also with the report so that you can choose the sites as you prefer.

The idea behind this post is to offer a quick insight into the 3 campsites in Horton Plains. We had camped out on campsites 1 and 2 in the past several years, but this year when we wanted to camp out on site 3, we weren’t able to find any detailed comparisons on all three sites.

To put things in perspective this is the latest update from January 2014 when we finally managed to visit campsite 3.

Booking the Campsites

You would have to visit the Wild Life Department Office in Battaramulla to make a reservation to any of these campsites. It would cost you LKR 2500 per day, and you could accommodate upto 10 people. If you are travelling by a vehicle they will charge you a vehicle fee at the park entrance which would be around LKR 280.

Wildlife Offce Contact Number – 0112888585

Getting There

If you are travelling through public transport, its advised to take the Fort-Badulla train and get off at Pattipola or Ohiya stations, from there its a ascending hike of around 9kms, but if you are taking a TukTuk it will cost around LKR 1500-2000, which is worth-it if you are carrying lot of camping gear.

A rough map of the 3 campsites in Horton Plains

Horton Plains Campsite 01

This is the closest campsite to the Wildlife Conservation Office. This is my favorite camping site out of all 3. If you are camping for the first time I would recommend to book this. It doesn’t have much space to camp out, but has easy access to constantly running stream of water, which will make your life much easier. It is also completely sealed off from the public eye, giving you much privacy.

The campsite is located on a small island like strip of land with water on three sides.

Getting there – below is the campsite 1

Getting there – below is the campsite 1

campsite 1, its covered by the stream from all other 3 sides.

Horton Plains Campsite 02

You could camp here if all other options are out. This campsite is located just across the hiking path to World’s End, so you will have visitors passing by your campsite during the daytime. So you will not have much privacy unless you are inside the tent. However, this campsite is located closer to the Chimney Pool, which is a great place to have a wash and a bath.

But I would recommend to avoid this if possible as this doesn’t have much privacy and on a weekend the path would get really busy with visitors. But if privacy is not a concern it is a great place to camp as it has easy access to running water.

campsite 2 – Water Bund at campsite 2 (other than privacy, its a great place to camp)

Horton Plains Campsite 03

This campsite is located between campsites 1 and 2, and has a lot of space to setup your tent. However, the only downfall here is that you would have to walk around 100 meters along the water stream to get to a decent place to have a wash, as water just in-front are stagnant and harder to access.

Since its not covered by larger mountains like on campsite 1, it has a great view at night and in the morning.

Campsite 3 is seen ahead, this is from the path to campsite 1 which is to the right

Campsite 3 is seen ahead- the picture is taken from where you can get access to running water, so you would have to walk a bit to have a good wash

Visiting Worlds End & Kirigalpoththa

If you are camping long enough we would recommend visitng worlds end at one end and Kirigalpoththa Mountain (second highest mountain in SL) at the other end.

Generally if you want to visit Worlds End I would recommend starting as early as possible, try to at least start your hike at around 6 or 7 so that you could reach there quite early. We started off a bit late and by afternoon the mist had gathered there and was no proper view.

End Product

3 days allowed us to create this time-lapse video capturing the breathtaking landscape of Horton Plains.

Special Thanks to Kelum, Varuna, Thinu & Thisara for the pics from our trips through the past few years.