When the British arrived on the island, after failed attempts at growing both sugar and indigo, they decided to give coffee a try, inspired by its success in the other colonies of Jamaica, Guyana and DominicaĬeylon saw a coffee rush as military men, civil servants and even civilians invested in plantations, lured by the promise of wealth and exoticism. It was brought here by the Arabs, long before Europeans set foot on the island, with the Sinhalese using the leaves to flavour their curries rather than brewing the beans. The bus station is dusty and noisy, tuk-tuks whizz around the streets honking their horns, and monks in orange robes gather outside the town’s temple with its enormous, colourful statue of Lord Buddha.Īlthough the region is synonymous with tea, coffee was once the main product of Sri Lanka’s hills. At heart, this is still very much a Sri Lankan Town. Spend any amount of time in Nuwara Eliya and you will see beyond the surface, that the Englishness is mostly a superficial façade, an uncanny valley depiction of ol’ Blighty. If you didn’t know any better, you could be in Windermere or Keswick. There is even a boating lake, golf club, and racecourse at Nuwara Eliya’s northern edge. Wander the streets and you will find rose gardens, clock towers, tea shops, a quaint little post office and a Holy Trinity church. Mock-Tudor buildings dominate the town, half-stone and half-timber piles enclosed by wrought iron fences with neatly mown lawns and pristine flower beds. While much of my travels are spent searching for something different, searching for a place to break the mundanity of home, Nuwara Eliya feels incredibly English. In doing so, he created his own little England. He decided to transform the hills into a sanitary retreat where troops could recover from the tropical diseases they had picked up in the muggy lowlands. Sir Edward Barnes, the island’s governor wasn’t instantly drawn to the region, enraptured by the bleakness, drizzle and mist-covered landscape that reminded him so much of home. The high plain was first spotted by a group of English officers who were out in the hills on an Elephant hunting expedition. This is England, but not as we know it.īefore the British came to Ceylon, there was nothing where Nuwara Eliya now stands. A few of the estates have familiar names: for every Sinhalese-named building, there is a multitude of sprawling estates with titles like Lavander house or Warwick Gardens, Stafford Bungalow or Somerset. Moving south-east into the epicentre of this tea-producing region, the smog and pollution of Kandy is replaced by fresh, dew-filled air palms and wetlands soon become forests of towering, delicate eucalyptus and gradually the concrete buildings begin to thin out, first replaced by wooden hovels with corrugated roofs that are in turn supplanted by stone walls, cottages and rustic churches surrounded by manicured gardens filled with shrubs and colourful bouquets. Some wear colourful saris while others resort to long overshirts in the hope that it will protect them from the sun during long days in the fields. As they nip the leaves, they fling them over their shoulders into the heavy sacks that rest on their backs, secured with a single strap around their foreheads. Specs of colour move slowly along the red dirt paths crisscrossing the patchwork of green as tea pluckers diligently pick the newest sprouting leaves from each bush. The roads wind precariously up the swollen green hills into the cool wisps of cloud and mist that hang between them. Heading into Sri Lanka’s hill country, the island’s stuffy, humid interior is quickly replaced by a chill.
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