We woke up at our amazing hotel in Kandy and our host Heshan had put on breakfast for us. There was so much food and cooked just for us. We spent the breakfast chatting to him and his children about Australia vs Srilanka. Did you know the Srilanka is smaller then Tasmania and has the amount of people that live in the whole of Australia. Either way if you are in Kandy stay at Remli Villa.
Our drive to Ella today would take us from Kandy to Ella but it would be taking us throught the majority of the worst hit areas from the Sri Lankan floods. A month ago Cyclone Ditwah tore across Sri Lanka and caused the country’s worst disasters in decades. It triggered widespread flooding and deadly landslides across all 25 districts but the worst hit were andy, Nuwara Eliya and Polonnaruwa. We were debating originally wether to still travel here as we didn’t want to be holidaying while they are still dealing with the after affects of this tragedy. We spoke to a lot of people before we came who assured us it was safe and that actually having tourists still coming meant money into the economy to help locals.
Either way the country has done amazing job at clearing the roads and starting to fix some of the houses and shops. We saw so much damage today and I think it is just a important to show what the Sri Lankan people are dealing with.
We headed across to Nuwara Eliya and the views from the roads of Teafields were beautiful. Our first stop was at a lookout of Ramboda Falls and surrounds. Very nice view.
Next step was to the Damro Labookellie Tea Centre to learn about how tea was made and to see their tea fields. Labookellie Tea Centre is among the oldest tea plantations in Sri Lanka. It has tea plantations spread across 5000 hectares at Nuwara Eliya and other regions in the country and hires 600 women whose job it is to pick tea. We were shown through the working factory and saw all the steps of tea production involving withering, rolling, fermentation, drying, grading, and sifting. I wish I could tranfer the smell of the factory it was amazing. It remindd me of when Grandad use to make tea with proper tea and steep it in the strainer. So fresh smelling. Anyway the whole tour was free and very fasinating. You also got a free taste testing of their tea. Don’t worry they get their money back with their gift shop. BTW they are only allowed to keep 20% of the tea they grow to sell, all the rest pf the tea is sent to auction to be bought by the big tea names. Chances are if you have had Lipton, Tetley, Twinnings or Dilmah lately chances are some of those leaves will have been grown and dried here.
We stopped for lunch at a little resturant in Nuwara Eliya which was pretty good. We also stopped at Gregory Lake which had lots of random horses and cows.
2 more hours in the car and we made it to Ella. Our driver informed us that his car couldn’t make it to our next accomodation and that the owner was coming to get us. Now this started to worry us. The owner came down picked us up and then took us up this freaking steep hill and I mean super steep. We were quite concerned about getting into and out of town ever day. Next thing was there was no air conditioning. So a lot of stuffing around and we went to check out some accomodation on the main street and with lots of stuffing around we swapped to a new accomodation. Both accomodations owners were amazing and super helpful in getting us sorted. The owner of the accomodation we cancelled ended up driving us to the other one. So nice! At least our driver can pick us up now!
We had a quick dinner and a brief look around Ella but it is seriously like a different country here. Its got real Bali/Thailand vibes.
