More Tea, Please

“The wind had just swept clear the whole valley of Nuwara Eliya. I saw, deep blue and immense, the entire high mountain system of Ceylon piled up in mighty walls." - Hermann Hesse, 'Aus Indien', 1913

The town of Nuwara Eliya is tea country. It sits at 7000 feet above sea level and everywhere there are rolling hills covered in Camelia sinensis, or the common tea plant. With this one plant, all of the tea varieties here are made: black tea, green tea, white teas, and several specialty teas. The differences are in the processing. 

The journey up here from Colombo consisted of a six hour train ride, through some of the most beautiful countryside you can imagine. You go from deep jungle up to pine forests and tea fields.  We were in the “observation car”, meaning the last car on the train with a big window on the end. The last 40 miles the train goes up over 5000 feet in elevation, so it doesn’t go all that fast. All the better to see the beautiful countryside you are going through. 

Sri Lankan trains may go through some of the most beautiful countryside anywhere, but as trains they leave a bit to be desired. We reserved 1st class, which basically means you have your own seat. But aircon?  Forget about it. When we were on our first train to the coast, all there were were a couple of rotating ceiling fans. As the day wore on, the temperature quickly rose. What no one knew on the train was that you could open the windows!  This helped with the temperature a little bit. 

The cars are very old, who knows how old, and the tracks are very wobbly, so the train car constantly moves back and forth, up and down. There is very little food service; every once in a while someone comes onboard to sell you one of those tasty Sri Lankan fried snacks or some peanuts, but that’s about it. Advice to future travelers:  bring your own food and drink. 

The first day, we visited a couple of tea houses; Bluefield Tea Gardens and Damro Tea Company. We took a factory tour at Bluefield and saw the huge machines they use to process tea, most of them almost 100 years old. All of the equipment works well. They sure don’t make them like they used to!  We saw how they dry the tea, separate the leaves and stems, crush the tea and then dry some more. We then had a tea tasting where we tasted some Orange Pekoe and some special medicinal tea, called Silver Tip. The latter had very little taste, but the Orange Pekoe was delicious!

Our driver, Nalante, then took us to a beautiful waterfall, called Ramboda Falls. Wow!  I’ve seen some amazing waterfalls in my life, but this ranks up there with some of the best. 

When we got back to town, we had an Ayurveda  massage. This consists of someone rubbing smelly oil over your entire body, including your hair, for about 30 minutes until you feel like a turkey ready for the oven.  Then you are placed in what looks like an iron lung made out of wood, but what is, in fact, a one body sauna machine. Your head is sticking out of this thing but the rest of you is inside. So then you sweat and sweat in this hot steam box. Overall, compared to other massages we’ve had, this wasn’t so great. And really, way, way too much oil. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent just wandering around, especially in the beautiful Victoria Gardens, where we saw many locals enjoying themselves, including three Buddhist monks. 

"There is no place in the world where so many languages are spoken, or which contains such a mixture of nations." - Robert Perceval, 'An Account of the Island of Ceylon', 1803

Horton Plains Cloud Forest is a beautiful national park about an hour’s drive from our hotel. To see the famous view from a place called World’s End, you need to get to the park by 6am, because on most days the view is obscured by clouds by 10am. 

So we started our 10 kilometer hike at 6 and were soon walking through forests of rhododendron trees and across lovely meadows. We got to the famous view and indeed, there it was in all its glory, the view from 1000 meters above the plain when on a clear day you can see across the island to the east coast. Today, although there were no clouds, you couldn’t see that far. 

In the afternoon we went to the Grand Hotel for High Tea. Built in 1891, the Grand Hotel is as English as it gets and High Tea here is a great tradition. For just $8, you get as much delicious black tea or coffee as you can drink and a three tiered tray of tasty snacks, from small sandwiches, sliders and other savory goodies to a large assortment of tiny desserts. All brought to you by tall, slim waiters in white uniforms, including a sarong. Quite elegant!