Everyone photographs Nine Arch from the wrong side

There is a deck on the Ella side that charges a few hundred rupees and appears in roughly every photograph of the Nine Arch Bridge ever taken. It is fine. It is also crowded from about 8am and the angle flattens the arches.

Walk the track from Demodara instead. Twenty minutes, mostly level, and you come out above the curve with the whole span below you and the tea going up the hill behind it.

Train times

Trains cross at roughly 06:50, 09:25, 11:40 and 15:15, but these move. Ask at Ella station the evening before — they will tell you honestly.

The bit nobody mentions

Stand on the Demodara side and you also get the tunnel mouth in frame. The train emerges from it directly onto the bridge, which is the shot everyone actually wants.