At every station, people board the rickety timber train, and wander through the carriages selling mango slices, parcels of rice and curry, oranges, spiced chickpeas and lottery tickets. Passengers hang outside the open doorways and when the train goes through the tunnels, the children shriek with delight.
We’re travelling east from Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, into the picturesque highlands and from the train windows; the dominant colour is a vivid green as far as the eye can see. Lush layers of velvet hug the slopes like a carpet of thick shag, manicured and laid out without a wrinkle.
The hillsides are dotted with specks of bright colour, as squads of sari-clad tea pickers move through the metre-high bushes deftly picking the leaves and buds and placing them into wicker baskets strapped to their backs. This is tea country — and for more than 130 years, Ceylon, Sri Lanka’s former name, has been a byword for some of the world’s finest teas, unrivalled in flavour and aroma.
Slap bang in the middle of the tea-growing region at 1,889m is Nuwara Eliya, which retains its hill station atmosphere more completely than anywhere else in the country.
Once the favoured stomping ground for tea planters wanting to escape the heat of the lowlands, its like a small twee English town that’s been transplanted to the tropics: hotels with wood-panelled billiard rooms and mounted trophies, country-style houses with rose gardens, a beautifully maintained golf course and a picturesque racecourse.
It’s mid-afternoon and we’re hanging out for our first decent cup of Sri Lanka’s famous brew. Down at the Hill Club on the outskirts of town, a white-jacketed, white-gloved waiter emerges from the main entrance carrying a tray containing a china teapot, cups and saucers. He walks across the immaculately manicured lawns and carefully places the crockery on the linen tablecloth. The whole tea-making ceremony is carried off with a delightful panache.
It’s in the hill country, where the tea plantations and hotels serve the type of brew you’d expect; a rich, golden, excellent quality liquor that is smooth, bright, and delicately perfumed.
Although tea is readily available all over the island from small roadside kiosks to railway stations to local eateries, curiously, it’s likely to be a concoction called ‘milk tea’ — where a poorer quality tea, hot milk and sugar are blended together before being poured into a cup.
If you’re interested to learn how a good strong cuppa is made, then take a tour at one of the nearby tea plantations such as the Pedro Tea Estate or the Labookellie Tea Estate. It’s also a good opportunity to stock up on quality teas to take back home.
A short train trip from Nuwara Elya is the sleepy village of Ella where a highlight is spending a night at the superbly situated Ambiente Guest House. Around 5am, you’re woken by the chanting of monks from the nearby monastery to then savour what must be Sri Lanka’s most magnificent sunrise view, straight through the Ella Gap to the coastal plains nearly 1,000m below. All experienced while still lying in bed.
After a couple of relaxing days taking walks in the surrounding hills through tea plantations to temples and waterfalls (guided by Ambiente’s pet dogs), we arrange for a driver to take us to Yala West National Park in the country’s south-east.
Although it sustained some damage due to the 2004 tsunami, Yala West is one of the few Sri Lankan national parks still open to travellers.
The cool green hill country is soon replaced with a flat, ochre-coloured landscape, and the air dry and crackling with the heat.
This is home to the water buffalo, which may be seen wallowing in muddy waters, often just a curve of magnificent horns, slits of eyes and dark-grey nostrils visible.
Water buffaloes are not only precious as ploughers of the rice fields but also prized for their milk, to make Sri Lanka’s favourite dessert — kiri peni, or curd and treacle.
Asitha, our driver, pulls up beside one of the wooden roadside stalls where the smiling owner is already busy ladling thick, white buffalo curd into three sundae glasses lined up on a tray. Once the curd is piled into the glasses, an elderly lady, who is also in the tiny stall, takes the stopper out of the bottle and pours a stream of golden treacle over it.
While having a brief discussion about cricket, the country’s national obsession, we enjoy the cool delicately flavoured curd, its slight tartness offset by the treacle, more accurately a syrup from the kitul palm.
As we get nearer to the coast, coconut palms sway in the breeze and the Indian Ocean, the colour of a Ceylonese sapphire, appears to be suspended between the burning white sand and the cloudless sky.
Few trees in the world are of greater benefit to man than the coconut. In addition to the milk (which can also be used to cure headaches, upset stomachs and hangovers) and the white pulp that’s a side dish accompanying almost every meal in Sri Lanka) use is also made of the husk that’s made into rope, mats and bed fillings.
When the flowers are tapped, a liquid pours out which, after only a few hours of fermentation, turns into a popular local beverage.
Tissamaharama, a busy town surrounded by rice paddies and dotted with temples, is the jumping off point for the Yala West National Park.
We base ourselves at the Tissa Rest House, delightfully situated right on the banks of the Tissa Wewa. To visit the national park, it’s best to hire a jeep and driver and be in place near a waterhole at dawn or dusk.
Yala West is a mixture of scrub, plains, lagoons, and rocky outcrops. Though not in the same league as Afri-ca’s safari parks, there are elephants, bears, deer, crocodiles, wild boar, monkeys, wild buffaloes, wild peacocks and a small population of elusive leopards that call it home.
Later that evening, back and resting at our accommodation after a satisfying day’s wildlife spotting, it’s time to order another cup of tea.
- See more at: http://www.khaleejtimes.com/wknd/wknd_article.asp?xfile=/data/wkndlifestyle/2013/September/wkndlifestyle_September5.xml§ion=wkndlastword#sthash.R0rFL24H.dpuf
No comments:
Post a Comment