A Visit to the Hill Country: Sri Lanka's Answer to the Hamptons

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We left Colombo at 8 am on Friday for our 200 km journey to the hill country and arrived at our destination at about 6 in the evening. I could dwell on the miserable roads and terrible driving conditions that our driver faced and the one hour standstill in Belagoda that slowed our trip, but I won’t. Instead let me tell you that we had a lovely time during the ride listening to more of our Elmore Leonard tape, taking pictures of the children returning home in a tuk-tuk after school (during the one hour wait), and enjoying the rich and beautiful scenery. (You can see how sweet the children are and their parents are equally friendly.)

It had been threatening rain all afternoon. Unfortunately, it just poured when we got to our hotel --- a theme resort that our travel agent promised would be just wonderful. We were booked into the “tree house,” which was really a tree house. We had to get to it by means of a suspension bridge and the porch looked out over the tops of the trees and across to the most gorgeous mountains. It was very exotic and I couldn’t wait for the morning when the sun would come up and we could see the sun and the view from our bed. We awoke to a morning as beautiful as I had hoped and we spent a bit of time before breakfast enjoying the view. We heard lots of monkeys, birds and noises from unidentified animals in the trees. I was even startled when a huge monkey ran across the porch and threw itself onto the limb of a tree below us.

From the Adventure Park, we moved on to the sweet town of Ella. Ella is one of the many villages dotting the country-side in the hill country of Sri Lanka. It’s residential gardens carry the legacy of the British presence with the most lovely flowers we’ve seen since our arrival in SL and the feeling that the Cotswalds might be just around the corner. David and I have done very little exercise since we got to SL between my severe cold with a cough that still hasn’t gone away and the serious pollution/traffic in Colombo, that’s discouraged D from even trying to find a jogging circuit near our guest-house. So, on Saturday, we decided to walk the 2 km up the hill that is known here as Little Adam’s Peak just outside of Ella (not to be confused with Adam’s Peak a seven kilometer hike that Buddhist pilgrims take this time of the year and that has actually killed a few pilgrims due to the cold, wind, and lack of food and water along the 5200 steps that are climbed in the middle of the night so you can see the sun come up from the Peak.) You won’t be surprised to know that I declined D’s invitation to climb that one.

You can see the top of LAP behind D in the picture. It was a glorious hike through a tea plantation with magnificent views of the valleys on both sides of the Peak. After that much-needed exercise, we moved on to our next destination passing the most beautiful landscapes we’ve seen in this country.

The towns are surrounded by terraced hills growing rice and tea bushes and, as one approaches the larger and elegant town of Nuwara Eliya, vegetables. The hill country has perpetual spring weather with cool evenings and warm days ---- perfect for growing all the lovely plants we prize in the US --- roses, tomatoes and, I would bet grapes, if anyone cared to take a chance on developing a wine industry in Sri Lanka.

In Nuwara Eliya, we stayed at a beautiful converted tea factory. Our room over looked their gardens and the tea plants encircling the hills across the valley. On Sunday, we visited with a friend from the US, a Sri Lankan citizen living in Boston and spending February with his family in his native country. Terence grew up in SL before going to the US to school and staying there for work. He invited us to the local golf course. It was a lovely place, but D and I still can’t get comfortable with the colonial feeling of most of the high end haunts around Sri Lanka ---- uniformed waiters and verandas and lots of pots of tea and being treated like a raja. We also visited the Hakgala Gardens that afternoon, envying the wonderful ferns that, of course, we can never grow.

Today we came back to hot Colombo passing many more tea centers (we’re bringing back lots of samples for when you visit us in either MA or NS). We had lunch overlooking one of the plantations with pickers right in front of the patio where we sat. I asked the waiter if he had brought them to the hotel to add to the ambiance. Apparently, these pickers belong to a well- organized union and are paid a good wage for their work. (just in case you are appalled by our callousness in enjoying lunch while watching them work.)

Next week we go to another part of the central region of SL. I suppose you are wondering how we have time for all the work we are doing. We’ve been spending long days working so that we can see as much as possible of this fascinating country before we depart in March. We get up early when it’s still cool and hit the computer and spend the day working and going to the internet café to email our completed work to Rosanna. We try to meet with her at least two or three days a week to get feedback on what we’ve done and to plan the next project. It seems to be working well since Rosanna is already talking about having us back again or perhaps keeping us here for another year or two.

As much as we love Sri Lanka, though, we’re thinking that it’s a big world out there and we want to see more of it. Any ideas about where we should go next?

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Comments

[T Frank]

Love the view of the Tea Factory and the Hakgala Gardens.... and of course Judy and David look rested and happy!