07 JUN 2018: It was accidental but fortunate planning that I ended up high in the mountains in the heart of Sri Lanka’s prime tea growing district at the end of April. Nuwara Eliya is so high in the hills that its climate is temperate and April is its high season when the heat and humidity has droves of Colombo residents heading for its cool respite.

End of April is also Vesak, the premier religious festival in the country commemorating the birth, enlightenment and death of Lord Buddha. Alcohol is prohibited on these full moon “poya” days.

Even at tourist hotels, restaurants, and bars, the sale and consumption of alcohol is not allowed in public. Thank goodness for tea. And after plus 35 Celsius weather, it was nice to enjoy the cool night breezes that blow through the Great Western Mountain range of the majestic central highlands. (Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka’s highest town is amid green mountains, under the gaze of the tallest peak, Pidurutalagala.)

The town was established by the British in the nineteenth century and is often referred to as “Little England”. It has a lovely municipal park, a golf course, boating lake, fine old colonial hotels and frequent rain showers. All very British. The modern commercial section of town is much less so with a jungle of small shops spilling onto sidewalks in bad repair, the disorder worsened by ever present noisy, chaotic, traffic.

No matter, I wasn’t here for the town, I was here for the spectacular tea estates. For miles and miles around I saw estates bearing such British names as Palmerston, Somerset, Strathdon, Kenilworth, Bearwell and Taylors. Many were open to the public for tours and tea tastings.

The first one I visited, Pedro Estate, charged a small fee for their tour (200 rupees, about $1.65). As my group went through the factory we were shown the various steps in making tea from the withering tables where the green leaves are semi-dried to the rolling and cutting machines and ending in the oven-like drying machine before being separated into grades of tea. At the end of the tour we were served a cup of tea. It was a pretty basic tour but the opportunity to walk among the rows of tea bushes and take photos of the pickers made it well worth the time.

I learned that these ladies each pluck about 18 to 20 kilos of tea leaves per day, gathering the harvest in sacks across their shoulders. For 20 kilos they get 1,000 rupees (about $8.20) – not much for a very hard day’s work. I had to admire their strength and energy as I saw them rapidly pluck the youngest two leaves and bud from the end of every branch in the rows they were working on, while balancing on very steep slopes with an increasingly heavy bag of leaves.

My second plantation visit to Glenloch Tea Factory, a 155-year-old private estate, was even more interesting. They produce four kinds of tea: white from little unopened tea leaves, green from unfermented tea leaves, golden flush from a mix of white and green and black which is from fermented leaves. Glenloch’s factory tour was excellent with great in-depth information about tea production.

Best of all, the tour ended with a taste of all four types of tea and an opportunity to buy the company’s hand made tea cakes and chocolates to accompany the teas. They didn’t charge for the tour but did encourage participants to purchase from the extensive selection of teas and other items in their well-stocked shop. It was an easy sell for me.

From tea country, I headed further north to stop for one night in Kandy before heading to Dambulla. I stayed at Amaya Hills the highest hotel above Kandy, Sri Lanka’s second largest city. The views were spectacular – so much so that I saw several wedding parties with photographers taking advantage of the backdrop. Access is up a long, narrow, twisty road but if you have a driver like we did, then you can sit back and enjoy the climb.

On the way up we were halted when a truck filled with furniture stopped and a volley of fireworks clattered off in the road in front of it. It turned out this was a new bride being welcomed by her husband’s relatives with a truck load of gifts.

One can’t live on tea alone and I certainly didn’t while in Sri Lanka. The cuisine is similar to Indian food, though with its own twists and specific dishes, and can be very spicy but really delicious. In my next column, more about the marvellous foods of the country.