Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka

Caught the 9:45am west bound train from Ella. What a stunning ride through the mountains on a cute CUTE old train! The journey was slow and there were frequent stops but the mountain tea plantation scenery was incredible. You had to jostle for position from left to right to get the best views from the seats so I joined the locals and hung out of the open doorways.

The journey took about four hours. On arrival at I grabbed a 20 minutes bus up to the main town. Had a good chat to a chap teaching the tea pickers English. Got off at the bus station. The town is nice in a typical Sri Lanka fashion with colonial buildings, golf course, parks and a lovely post office. 

Walking about I came across a chap on the street who could do a room for me in the Piya guest house on budget, so walked with him for what seemed like miles to get there. The room is literally a double bed in a clean box! This is all me and Monsta need.

It's getting late so I find a guide that can get me a tour of a tea factory - being English and all I obviously had to go! I went to the Mackwoods tea plantation, pretty huge by all standards, seemingly covering each hill we passed on the 15km journey there! 

Tea covered hills - you can just see the pickers as white dots

A quick (free - donation accepted) tour of the relatively tiny, but amazingly smelling, factory and then to the tea bar, to sample some fine fresh Ceylon, which was brewed in a teapot, served in a china cup and was completely fantastic - like no tea I've ever tasted before!

Tea drying - ahhh the smell

Back from the plantation I grabbed some carrots from a veg. stall. Along with cabbages and other typical English vegetables they grow great here in the cooler mountain air. 

I have a stroll into Victoria park, only to be stopped and notified of a price list. It has something written in Silhanese 

In the evening I head into town for a walk about. There's lots of people but no other tourists. I head into a local hotel (restaurant) and grab some tuna in a curry sauce, with some bread and water. I get chatting to the waiter who's English is amazing (he used to work for an American company in the middle east), he tells me that the tourists stay in the hotels for dinner. I swap email addresses with the waiter and check the guide book as to the location of a large colonial hotel and head down there, purely out of curiosity! A very grand typically English man building meets me, quite enormous. Walking in a man greets and ushers you to the bar, where I order a local stout. I head for the piano lounge and chill there for a while, watching people come and go under the chandeliers in their dinner outfits, I could almost have gone back in time if not for my shorts and t-shirt dragging me back. A man from the States makes a kind of clicking noise at the Sri Lankan man playing piano, and hands him 50 rupees.