Nuwara Eliya
Jackamy
Paul & Derry Harper
Mon 17 Jan 2011 18:09
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Monday 17th January
The drive to Nuwara Eliya was stunning,
surrounded by wildlife and tea plantations, the horizon was green as far as the
eye could see. It was one of our shortest drives so it enabled time to relax
once we arrived. The hotel was fantastic, once a british governor's mansion, it
still retains the colonial feel. With a fantastic welcome from the staff we
began relaxing in the huge rooms. The hostess continued to look after us into
the evening up until dinner as she was fully aware, after climbing Adam's
Peak herself, how you begin to feel as the day progresses.
 Cheeky monkeys playing at the
roadside
 Green, green and more
green
 Driving through the tea
plantations and meeting the local ladies
 The Heritage Hotel
 Relaxing in the huge
rooms
Nuwara Eliya is often referred to
as 'Little England'. The toy town ambience of the main hill station makes it
more like the TV show 'Little Britain', but with a disorienting surrealist edge.
Ten or more three wheeler tuk-tuks are lined up alongside red telephone boxes
opposite the pink brick Victorian post office and adjacent to a very British
children's playground with well tended hedgerows and pretty flower gardens. Once
into the dusty and bustling centre of town though you realise that it is a
thoroughly sri lankan tangle.
Originally an uninhabited system
of forests and meadows, Nuwara Eliya became a singularly British creation,
having been 'discovered' by colonial officer John Davy in 1819 and chosen as the
site for a sanatorium a decade later. Later, the district became known as the
spot where English vegetables and fruits, such as lettuce and strawberries,
could be successfully grown for consumption by the colonists. Coffee was one of
the first crops grown here, but after the island's coffee plantations failed due
to disease, the colonists switched to tea. As tea experiments proved successful,
the town quickly found itself becoming the hill country's 'tea
capital'.
 The post office............An
old house
 Tuk-tuks lined up next to the
red phone box
 Busy fruit markets with dried
fish stalls and a beef stall. Breathing through the mouth and not the nose was
essential!
 Once again after an hour or so of
soaking up the atmosphere and wandering around we were back on the bus for the
next stop on our whirlwind tour. It's a shame that the distances are so big as
we have spent a lot of time on the bus but they were all essential stops so as
to get a feel for the whole of sri lanka and it's diversity. We had planned on
taking the train from Nuwara Eliya to Ella, another hill town, as it is
said to be one of the most spectacular train journeys, as the train chugs along
at a leisurely pace through the mountains and tea plantations. Unfortunately the
24 seater observation carriage was full so we decided to drive down to the coast
and add another dimension to our trip. The drive down through the hills via Ella
was beautiful and I can imagine how spectacular the train journey would be.
We even came across a small herd of water buffalo strolling across the road as
well as a local family having their daily wash in one of the many
waterfalls.
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