Assault on the senses

Gabrielle in her bippety-boppety hat at the tea plantation

We had commented in the morning that the hotel team need to get a wiggle on if they were going to get their Christmas decs down in time. Lo and behold, come lunchtime when we ventured into the bar, all signs of Christmas had gone.

The spluttery one was looking a tad sorry for himself when we got back from lunch, so a restorative kip was called for. Dinner was nicely uneventful and we set ourselves the challenge of an early night. Lights out at 10pm.

Four hours sleep. Not too bad. The spluttery one continued spluttering throughout the night. Quite frankly, how there wasn’t an unpleasant death bestowed on him (by me, obvs), I do not know. Then when the alarm went off at 5.30am (yes, apparently that time actually exists), he had the audacity to be all bright and cheerful. Meanwhile I did my usual stumble around act.

We were second down for breakfast and somehow managed to eat something at such an ungodly hour. Yet again we just managed to get to reception on time. One of these days we’ll be early. Maybe. So far we have always managed to be on the button with our timing. Never late, thank goodness.

And so back onto the chaos of Kandy traffic. What’s worse, a Saturday or Monday morning rush hour? It’s a close contest. The school children have to be at school by 7.30 and we left the hotel at 7.15, so the roads were inevitably chaotic. Add in to that the Police “directing” traffic, progress was slow with much tooting from everyone.

We only travelled 70 km today to our first stop of the day, the Damro tea plantation and factory, but it’s taken 2 and a half hours to get there. After we left Kandy behind us, it was up, windy and hairpin bends. Dogs in the roads, having to overtake on solid white lines due to the slowness of the lorries in front. It was slow, tiring progress but we were rewarded with the most stunning views. The higher we drove, the more Sri Lankan the scenery became. Very picture postcard with masses of tea plantations. One after the next.

On the side of the road were frequent shacks. These shacks had the most orderly fruit and vegetables set out. All organic. Angel trumpet shrubs lined the roads throughout our journey today.

It was a relief when we finally stopped at Damro Tea plantation. A 1200 acres plantation set at 1800 metres. It employs 1000 workers at this plantation with 600 ladies picking the leaves. On average, 1 lady picks 20kg per day. The tea leaves take roughly 14 hours to dry. There is a long trough where the leaves are turned by hand. Green tea and black tea are made from the same leaf, however white tea is a decaf and the very tip of the leaf is used for white tea. There are 38 Damro factories in Sri Lanka and they produce approximately 2000 kg a day.

It was a very brief, but interesting snippet of Sri Lanka. It being such an important part of Sri Lanka, I would have wanted the talk to be more in depth. However, we are learning fast, the talk is brief, because they simply want you to buy. We didn’t buy as the tea in the UK is significantly cheaper.

Next stop was Nuwara Eliya for our train ride to Hatton. Atulah convinced us of the side of the track we should catch the train, exactly what time it would arrive and from which direction. Ok, so in reality, it arrived from the opposite direction, on the platform opposite the one we were expecting, and 20 minutes late. So very much like the UK then. Chaos, bedlam, mayhem, take your pick. All of the above. Eventually we located our carriage and watched a stack of people being told to get out of the carriage. Phew, we had reservations and the system here seemed to be that there was a designated carriage for reserved tickets.

There was a mixed smell of cinnamon from the milky tea being served, but also the diesel smell from the train. There were people walking along the tracks who had to squash themselves into the rock face of the side of the train, so as not to get hit. All windows were open providing a lovely breeze, but also a good amount of dust. The din when we went through the cuttings and tunnels was phenomenal.

The trolly dolly was neither. There were a couple of blokes carrying a flask and basket. That was it.

There were the odd nerve racking moments when the drops from the train line were massive. We had already seen the volume of rock fall on our drive up to Nuwara Eliya. It’s the same the world over, local kids were waving to anyone who would wave back. It’s a train, that’s what you have to do.

When we got to Hatton, we were sorry to leave the train, but Atulah was beaming to see us arrive. We had a brief drive to our next two day stop, The Argyle, which I have to say is extremely fancy.