The mountains of Sri Lanka are world famous for one thing – tea.  During the British colonial days the Brits often headed up into the mountains to escape the heat and they found the fertile soil perfect for growing tea.  Tea was initially planted to satisfy their personal needs but a bigger opportunity was recognised and soon British industrial knowledge was applied to the task.  This started an industry that put Ceylon on the map and turned the sleepy island colony into a critical component of the global British empire.

But there are many things to see and do along the road to these vast tea plantations high in the mountains.  From Kandy we drove down the mountain to the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage, where I had visited in 2007, to see the elephants led down to the river for their morning bath.

Unfortunately we learned that because the river had swollen due to the recent heavy rains it was too high to bathe the elephants and they wouldn’t be making their daily pilgrimage.  Bummer, especially for Julie.

On the winding mountain road back to Kandy we stopped for some photos and at a food stall to quench our thirst on some King coconut juice and taste its soft white meat and eat a couple of little sugar bananas. There were six different varieties of large and small bananas, red, yellow, green and some very large curvy weird ones.    It seems that everything can grow in these fertile mountains, even things we’ve never seen before.

We headed out to the Peradeniya Botanical Garden, a place I remembered well from 8 years ago.  This is an amazing setting with a rich history – the first botanical garden was established in the 14th century and the current version is from the British almost 200 years ago.

As we wandered around the paths of this sprawling site we were just blown away by the size and shapes of some of the trees.  Clearly the weather here provides ideal growing conditions and some of these large trees have just gone super jumbo over their long and healthy life.  Trees from all over the world were featured, all of them just magnificent in both scale and style.  We loved our time there and could have used another couple of hours (except for the pestering drizzle).

But we were on a mission for some tea.  From Kandy at an elevation of 500 metres Mr. T negotiated a slow, winding and dramatic drive up the mountains to the town of Nuwara Eliya at 1,800 metres.

The road twisted and turned in and around the rising mountains while the motor bikes, tuk tuks and huge trucks kept coming and going in a random and sometimes dangerous manner.  As we climbed we could see how the villages got smaller and there became less and less industry.  This was really a rural farming environment, people working hard and living fairly tough.

But they were rewarded with beautiful surroundings, higher and higher mountains, some of them quite steep, deep valleys, lush green jungle wherever the farmers haven’t carved out some land for their crops, and water rushing everywhere because of the recent rains.

And soon we started to spot our first tea plants, and then a lot of them, and then more again, blanketing hill sides in all directions, not planted in rows but all containing vague snake-like paths through which pickers could walk to pluck the new growth leaves.  And as we gained elevation the tea plants were growing in all directions, running up and down the steepest hills, all plucked neatly at chest height with a scattering of tall trees amongst them to give some shade.

And waterfalls!  Because of the recent heavy rain the water was pouring off these steep mountains and we met huge rushing waterfalls on almost every corner.   At a village called Ramboda which was nestled into the corner of a deep valley, we stopped to admire a number of waterfalls all visible from one spot.  Torrents of water were dropping off the higher plateaus of the mountains and there were waterfalls in stereo!

 

But our road kept going up, switchbacking out of this valley and climbing further up.  We passed many impressive tea plantations, most having English or Scottish names, tea plants covering the steep hills in all directions, workers out plucking leaves and dropping them into a big bag suspended across their back.

The pickers were almost all women, and almost all Tamils, descendants of southern Indian Tamils the British imported to pick leaves 150 years ago because the locals didn’t work hard enough.  For this hard backbreaking work in all weather, up and down the steep hills, they were paid about 400 Rupees, or A$4.00 per day.  The men worked in the factories under generally drier and easier conditions.

We stopped at the largest plantation in the area, Mackwoods, and had a fascinating – if somewhat brief – tour of the tea factory.  Two interesting points came out of the tour – first, all varieties, colours and flavours of tea come from the same leaf, it is what you do with the leaf that makes the difference; and second, the entire tea leaf processing takes place in one day.  They pick it, transport it to the factory, dry it, process it, ferment it (3 hours), pack it in 58kg bags and ship it out all in one day.  And the process takes up relatively small amount of space with equipment that looks like it dates back to the 1950’s.  Fairly low tech and straightforward, this tea stuff.

Then we moved inside for a complimentary cup of tea and visit to the tourist shop.  The experience didn’t completely convert me to tea but it was fascinating to learn more about the history and the process of producing tea.  Then it was back on the winding road further up the hill, surrounded by more tea, more tight bends and switchbacks, more stunning mountains around us, mostly hiding behind mist and clouds from the low hanging weather.

Eventually we made it to the road’s summit, 1,893 metres which is quite impressive by Aussie standards, and the temperature was only 17 degrees, a bit of contrast to the 35 degrees we had two days before.  We entered the little mountain town of Narawa Eliya, established by the British as an escape from the lowland heat and as a base for their tea plantations.  Nicknamed Little England, at least the weather was a match.

We explored the wet and dry markets of this little mountain town amongst the shops and wet markets.   We enjoyed our walk amongst the vegetable stands, fish stalls and butchers, all great stuff, before hitting the clothing stalls where I bought a 100% genuine fake Chinese-made North Face Gore-Tex rain jacket.  We had an early night because the next morning we were hitting the mountain trails.