High tea in Sri Lanka

In the island country’s inland hills, quirky and elegant lodgings nestle amid terraced tea farms

Tea is sampled at the Norwood Estate plantation near Hatton in Sri Lanka, home to some of the world’s finest teas. The hill country is an oasis of cool calm, largely unblemished by the long war against the Tamil insurgency in the island’s north.
Tea is sampled at the Norwood Estate plantation near Hatton in Sri Lanka, home to some of the world’s finest teas. The hill country is an oasis of cool calm, largely unblemished by the long war against the Tamil insurgency in the island’s north.

HATTON, SRI LANKA -- The man in the khaki vest slurped noisily from his cup, descended briefly into scowling meditation, spat the contents into a sink and unleashed a torrent of approving descriptors, lavishly rolling his r's along the way: "No foreign taste, very refreshing, robust, strong tannins, a tingly sensation at the end of the tongue -- good show!"

photo

The New York Times

A map of Sri Lanka.

photo

The New York Times

The Temple of the Tooth is the repository of a famed Buddhist relic in Kandy, Sri Lanka. In addition to the fabled tooth of Buddha itself, the museum houses jewelry and relics of the imperial era as well as an exhibition documenting the 1998 bombing that killed 11 here.

photo

The New York Times

A train crosses the Nine Arches Bridge, near Ella, Sri Lanka. Navigating Sri Lanka’s hill country by rail can be a beguiling experience but also a time-consuming one, as the trains move slowly through the undulating rough country.

I sipped and nodded, thinking: Right, but it's still tea. Granted, it was excellent tea, cultivated just outside the Norwood Estate processing factory where we stood, surrounded by whirring machines and immense bags stuffed with tea leaves.

Here in the alluring hill country of Sri Lanka, some of the finest tea in the world is grown at an elevation exceeding 4,000 feet. As Andrew Taylor, the Norwood resident planter and native Sri Lankan, had made emphatically clear, everything about this beverage required martial exactitude, from the small-handed women who carefully picked the leaves and the 170 minutes the leaves spent being machine-oxidized, to the 21 minutes of drying on long trays, and the 6 minutes Taylor cheerily advised me was optimal to consume my drink after it was brewed -- "so bring your stopwatch, ha ha!"

Sri Lanka is a sunny heartbreak of a nation, a welcoming South Asian island country beset by three decades of ethnic war that came to an end in May 2009, when the Sinhalese government routed the Tamil Tigers. As many as 100,000 Sri Lankans died along the way. Another 38,000 were killed when the tsunami of 2004 pulverized its eastern coast.

It's entirely possible to visit the country formerly known as Ceylon in a state of blissful ignorance, to ogle its elephants and leopards roaming about in the national parks or to languish on the many beach resorts in coastal Galle and Batticaloa, and in that way sidestep the scabs of history.

By contrast, the hill country stretching across the island's midsection presents an authentic side of Sri Lanka. Although largely unblemished by the long war, the roots of conflict -- proud Buddhist nationalism (as evinced by the region's great temples), the residue of British colonialism (apparent in its tea estates) and Tamil militancy (expressed in a single but notable act of violence, a deadly bombing in a Buddhist temple) -- are here to be discovered and pondered.

Navigating the hills by rail can be beguiling, but time-consuming, as trains move slowly through undulating rough country and run infrequently throughout the day. I opted for a van with a cheerful Sinhalese driver named W.S. Yapa, who has been ferrying tourists and journalists for more than three decades. (Sri Lanka's roads are invariably two lane but well-paved and safe.)

On the three-hour drive from the capital city, Colombo, to Kandy, Yapa pulled over twice so I could visit roadside stands selling delicious locally grown cashews and boiled corn on the cob.

Kandy sits in a valley beside a placid lake. Like most Sri Lankan cities, Kandy, with a population of 109,000, has the scruffy atmosphere of a once-small village that became sloppily urbanized.

FAMOUS FOR ORCHIDS

One comes to Kandy for three main reasons. One is to visit the Royal Botanical Gardens, about three miles from the city. I did not do so, because it was drizzly and the grounds are famous above all for orchids, and even on a dry day I am strangely underwhelmed by orchids.

Kandy's other two attractions were easily worth the trip. The first is the famed Buddhist sacred Temple of the Tooth, in the very center of town. After paying 1,000 rupees (about $8) for admission, I slipped off my shoes, entered through the security booth and found myself in a crease of the city where all is hushed and orderly.

The sumptuous marble temple contains two large shrines, along with a series of paintings that memorialize the odyssey of the Buddha's tooth until the end of the 16th century, when it at last arrived in Kandy and is presently entombed in a small gold casket.

One floor up was an exhibition of photographs depicting the temple's wall in a state of semi-demolition, the result of the 1998 bomb blast attributed to the Tamil Tigers that killed 11. Sixteen years later, security guards were still frisking visitors.

From the temple, I wandered a few hundred yards into the Kandyan Art Association and Cultural Center just as an hour-long performance by traditional dancers and fire-eaters was getting underway, led by a Sumo-sized but fervid and surprisingly nimble young male dancer. Watching them hop across a bed of fiery coals reminded me that I needed to retrieve my shoes. I did so, called Yapa on my cellphone and together we drove into the hills above the city, where I was due for an evening at Helga's Folly.

The visual pandemonium of this rambling 35-room chalet -- Dali meets Addams Family -- overwhelmed me at first, like tumbling through a kaleidoscope of oil paintings, vintage furniture and spicy fragrances. As the photographs on the walls attest, the Folly's guest dossier includes Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Sir Laurence Olivier, Gregory Peck and Vivien Leigh. A sign admonished me to keep windows closed so monkeys wouldn't raid the kitchen.

The next morning, we took a 40-mile, 2 1/2 hour drive upcountry to the town of Hatton. The hills were tropical, and fruit stands girdled the two-lane A-7 highway, which had little traffic beyond the ubiquitous feral dogs and three-wheeled Asian taxis known as tuk-tuks.

As we climbed past 4,000 feet, the vistas revealed majestic waterfalls and terrace after terrace of tea plants. We pushed through the compressed beehive of Hatton and into the heart of tea plantation country, a world of verdant staircases occupied by laborers with heavy bags across their shoulders.

NO DIETARY CONCERNS

I had arrived at Tientsin, the oldest (built in 1888) of four bungalows operated in the Hatton area by Ceylon Tea Trails, Sri Lanka's first Relais & Chateaux resort. Shortly after I was shown to my colonial high-ceilinged room, the chef knocked on my door and proceeded to describe the three-course lunch and four-course dinner he had in mind for me and to make sure that I had no dietary concerns.

I sat on the patio overlooking the terraces and enjoyed a near-perfect meal of carrot and coriander soup, fresh bread, grilled tuna with tarragon sauce and apple crisp. I was about to order tea when the manager informed me that I had an appointment in 15 minutes at the nearby Norwood tea factory with their planter in residence, Taylor.

Two hours after my tea-slurping seminar, I went for a stroll through the tea plantation abutting Tientsin. Along the narrow roads, the only other pedestrians were women carrying freshly plucked leaves in large sacks or bundles of tea plant branches to use as firewood. The British planters had long since left these hills: Their estates were expropriated in the 1950s, then returned to them a few years later. But the ensuing years of war and government-initiated land reform efforts had compelled them to take their interests elsewhere.

Even under local ownership, a colonial air pervades the region. The female laborers greeted me warmly and chatted among themselves as they walked off into the setting sun, but I suffered no illusion that their $4-a-day livelihood was a particularly happy one.

Presently I was alone, moving through the sea of leaves, past residences pumping out local music and Bollywood dialogue. Behind me tucked into the hills was a single aglow building, the Tientsin bungalow.

A SWEETER SURPRISE

Yapa picked me up the next morning. The 3 1/2-hour drive to Ella was even more beautiful -- velvety mountains, the mighty Devon Falls, twinkling Gregory Lake, the wildly baroque roadside Rama Sita temple -- than the previous day's journey. An even sweeter surprise was Ella itself.

Ella has an agreeable scruffiness, the tea plantations and birch trees sharing the landscape with ramshackle restaurants and guesthouses. A couple of miles past town, we pulled in to the Secret Ella, a sleek resort. The concierge showed me to my shiny wood-and-concrete room and presented me with a mobile phone with which I could summon him.

Although it was getting chilly, I could not resist the rolling views from the dining patio, where I was presented with enough food -- fruit salad, wild mushroom soup, curried fish -- to fortify five of me. Afterward, I wandered down the road to the lovely 98 Acres Resort, with its swimming pool seemingly hoisted up by the tea terraces.

I took a drink at the bar and continued my stroll downhill toward Ella. Then the rain began to fall hard. Drenched, I staggered into the Curd & Honey Shop at the town's main junction. I ordered a pot of tea, which cost about a dollar.

I sat there for an hour or so, watching the rain thin out while the ancient properties of the local beverage worked their magic on me. Newly imbued and somewhat dry, I marched back uphill.

Travel on 04/19/2015

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