The Hideout is the highlight of our whole tour, if not for the secret discovery we made the very next day (more of that later). There are only good things to be said about this place, except one and that is actually discovering this place. The owners of this place have given it the perfect name. The Hideout is indeed hidden out of normal people. It is located near the moon plains if you searched moon plains in the google maps you’d get close enough and even after that you would have to navigate a bit and this has been made very easy by the owners by placing boards that points to its location. This far enough from the main road that would make you feel you need to take a vehicle, however, remember it is hard to navigate through these roads in a vehicle (although not impossible) and we too did it successfully.

Even after reaching out it is hard to locate it but the owners were nice enough in the right direction. Even before you reach the cottage you’ll be greeted with your bodyguard for the day, “Lucky” the dog. Lucky is a pure white dog that nicely complimented the glitter of the stars in the night sky (make sure to pet he loves it, he is a good boy after all). 

The Hideout is a very simple premise. It is not fancy, it is not luxurious if that is what you expect this is not the place but it has many more things. It has two phases in it. One it shows in the night and another it shows in the dawn. We could not believe anyone was smart enough to emphasize the natural location and the environment and the time of the day to emphasize different parts of the “Hideout” experience. 

The first phase is the one you can enjoy in the night. We arrived at the place at night hence this is the phase we were faced with. The top part of the Hideout cottage is specifically built to star gazing, this is a clever move because of the natural alignment of Nuwara Eliya and Hideout relative to it. Nuwara Eliya is one of the highest points in Sri Lanka, The Hideout is located in an even higher point, coupled with the fact that it is a city with least light and air pollution in the world makes it one of the best places to watch stars. You could literally observe thousands (more like millions probably) of stars that you couldn’t in the city of Colombo. The night sky in Nuwara Eliya is in fact a brightly lit sight to behold. This coupled with the small LED bulbs and the wonderful lighting of the place makes it may be perfect to observe this beautiful natural phenomenon.

The next phase and the most astounding one maybe is the dawn. You could use the same window you used to observe the stars to observe the sunrise, the dim lights that slowly gets brighter bring out a never seen beauty, the natural lighting really brings the best out of the place, and when the morning has arrived you could really see how the place looks like. The interior designs and architecture become more visible. It is then we realized that this place was designed by an artist. The interior decorations are full of little artsy ornaments and designs and bring out a quirky side to the place which no other brings. It is by no means perfect or luxurious or even expensive but if you took a picture of anywhere from any angle it would be wallpaper worthy. You can not take a bad picture here, it is impossible, it is that good. The experience was world-shattering, I think it should be viewed up close. I think my comments depicted down below would summarize it best.

Then we reluctantly said goodbye to this place and went to our next destination, which the place which made our jaws drop. This place was so good we could not capture its beauty in camera. No image can show this place in full glory and I doubt my words could any better but I’ll try. An unlikely untouched, and an untapped slice of nature we discovered accidentally which also became our next major destination stick around to find out.