Handpicked experience · Kandy
Kandy, Sri Lanka
Seven of the eleven hours are the road. The compensation: a tea landscape that only exists because a fungus killed the coffee, and the people who actually pick it.
Visit the splendid Glenloch Tea Plantation and watch women picking tea leaves
Enter the tea factory and discover the careful, precise art of tea processing
Stand before South Asia's largest Buddha stature: the Bahiravokanda Vihara Buddha Statue
See one of the highest waterfalls in Sri Lanka, the Ramboda Waterfalls
Bask in the peaceful atmosphere of Gregory Lake
A highland drive with wide views over the plantations and the valley
A working plantation and factory, with a tasting
Photo stops at the falls and other lookouts along the road
Unstructured time at the lake and in the town's park
Eleven hours from Kandy up into the tea country and back. Be clear about the shape of it: the distance is under eighty kilometres, but the road climbs through continuous hairpins and takes three to four hours in each direction. Something like seven of your eleven hours will be spent in the vehicle. The drive is genuinely beautiful, so this is only a problem if you were expecting a day in Nuwara Eliya rather than a day getting to it.
The hills you are driving through were covered in coffee, not tea. In the 1870s a fungus arrived that attacks coffee leaves, and within about a decade it had destroyed the entire industry — plantations abandoned, planters ruined, the colonial economy gutted. Tea was the replacement crop, first planted commercially here in 1867 and then expanded across every failed coffee estate on the island. An accident of plant pathology produced the landscape now considered characteristic of the country.
Above about twelve hundred metres the plant grows slowly in cool air, and slow growth concentrates flavour. Nuwara Eliya sits near nineteen hundred, the highest of the growing districts, and produces a pale, brisk, almost astringent liquor quite unlike the dark tea most people associate with the island. Taste it without milk at least once at the factory; adding milk to it is a waste of what altitude did.
The women working the slopes are mostly Tamil, descended from labourers brought over from southern India in the nineteenth century to work these estates. After independence a change in citizenship law left several hundred thousand of them stateless — neither Sri Lankan nor Indian — and it took until 2003 for the last of that to be resolved. A picker's daily quota runs to eighteen or twenty kilos of leaf, taken two leaves and a bud at a time. It is worth knowing before you photograph anyone.
The town was built as a retreat for colonial administrators escaping the heat, and it still has the golf course, the racecourse, the mock-Tudor post office and the hedges. What nobody warns visitors about is the temperature: at this altitude the nights approach freezing, frost is not unusual, and people arrive from the coast in shorts and spend the afternoon shivering. Bring a jumper.
The falls on the route drop around a hundred metres in stages beside the road. The temple nearby is dedicated to the monkey god of the Indian epic, and this whole region is threaded with sites claimed as locations from that story — a pilgrimage route that draws visitors from India in considerable numbers.
Admission at the tea factory, the park and any boat on the lake is arranged on the day, as are meals. Carry cash; card acceptance up here is patchy.
Layers, a waterproof and shoes you can walk wet grass in. The hills make their own weather and an afternoon can turn in twenty minutes. Cancellation requires two days' notice.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Around seven of the eleven hours. The distance is under eighty kilometres but the road is continuous hairpins, taking three to four hours each way. The scenery makes it bearable; the arithmetic does not change.
Because a leaf fungus destroyed the island's coffee industry in the 1870s and 1880s. Tea, first planted commercially in 1867, replaced it across every ruined estate, so the landscape is the result of a plant disease.
Pale, brisk and slightly astringent, not the dark strong tea most people expect. Cool air above twelve hundred metres slows growth and concentrates flavour, and Nuwara Eliya is the highest district of all.
Not for the first cup. Milk masks precisely the qualities altitude produced, so taste it plain at the factory before deciding.
Mostly Tamil women descended from labourers brought from southern India in the nineteenth century. A citizenship law after independence left hundreds of thousands of them stateless, and the last of that was only settled in 2003.
Because the town sits close to nineteen hundred metres. Nights approach freezing, frost occurs, and visitors arriving from the coast in shorts spend the afternoon cold.
Admission at the tea factory, the park and any boat on the lake, plus all meals. Carry cash, since card acceptance in the hills is unreliable.