Now that the civil war between the Sinhalese government and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka has come to an end, I was encouraged to revisit my travel diaries from my visit to Sri Lanka in October 2003.
After some time by the beach, it was time to leave the compounds and head into the Terraced Tea Country of PG Tips boxes fame.
I had planned to stay in Nuwara Eliya. This is in the heart of the tea plantations and a short drive away from two National Parks. I was looking forward to getting away from the humidity of the coast and exploring the lush interior. Certainly on the drive up, I got to see a lot of beautifully cared for tea plantations. They are also planted with lots of trees, lots of flowering bushes and shrubs and the wrinkled nature of the landscape provided endless views, myriad waterfalls, pools, and roads clinging carefully to the hillside.
The first downside of the journey was that it took 5 and a half hours to go 150km. 5 and a half hours of that highway code in full effect!
The second downside unfortunately was the hotel that I had booked into. The Hill Club in Nuwara Eliya had the longest, most enticing write up of any of the hotels in the whole Lonely Planet guide to Sri Lanka. With it’s stone facing and Tudor gabling it looked like an archetypal Scottish hunting lodge and tried to preserve a little piece of the Empire for interested tourists.
Sadly the enterprise seemed to lack any sense of irony, design or investment. It was simply caught in a nineteenth Century timewarp. To give you a flavour of the place, the hotel insisted that I wear jacket and tie to dinner. All the tourists there were squeezed into badly fitting, frayed jackets of varying sheen. We all looked a lot smarter when we were in our own clothes. Sadly much else was wrong about the place.
From the room where the beds were actually soggy through damp, to the bathroom that produced no hot water after an hour of trying to pull through to the breakfast toast that had mould on it, every aspect of the Club failed to live up to the most basic expectations of a hotel. The motheaten hunting trophy heads, the warped snooker table and the mildewed chess set added to the pervasive sense that I was in fact boarding in The House of Usher.
So I moved in the morning to ‘The Tea Factory Hotel’, the original recommendation of the agent in Colombo. It was a Tea Factory, and now it is a Hotel – what imaginative titling!! It is a 19th Century style factory, and they’ve left lots of large iron wheels and brass fittings from the factory in the décor of the building.
My room was on the top floor and looked down a valley towards the mountains and World’s End National Park. I went on a little tour round a small tea factory which produces tea from the tea plants around the hotel. The day after I went on a walking trek round the plantation.
When the sun came out and the greens of the trees and tea plants glowed, it made for a nice place to relax for a few days.
The final interesting note about this place was a warning in the room. It says that “When the hotel was built it was constructed to catch the full force of the wind to help dry the tea leaves. This wind howls to this day (and it did!). During the midnight hours, you may also hear drumming and chanting from neighbouring farmers as they endeavour to keep wild boar and buffaloes from destroying their vegetable cultivation. If this is going to disturb your sleep, collect complimentary earplugs from reception.”!!
After some time by the beach, it was time to leave the compounds and head into the Terraced Tea Country of PG Tips boxes fame.
I had planned to stay in Nuwara Eliya. This is in the heart of the tea plantations and a short drive away from two National Parks. I was looking forward to getting away from the humidity of the coast and exploring the lush interior. Certainly on the drive up, I got to see a lot of beautifully cared for tea plantations. They are also planted with lots of trees, lots of flowering bushes and shrubs and the wrinkled nature of the landscape provided endless views, myriad waterfalls, pools, and roads clinging carefully to the hillside.
The first downside of the journey was that it took 5 and a half hours to go 150km. 5 and a half hours of that highway code in full effect!
The second downside unfortunately was the hotel that I had booked into. The Hill Club in Nuwara Eliya had the longest, most enticing write up of any of the hotels in the whole Lonely Planet guide to Sri Lanka. With it’s stone facing and Tudor gabling it looked like an archetypal Scottish hunting lodge and tried to preserve a little piece of the Empire for interested tourists.
Sadly the enterprise seemed to lack any sense of irony, design or investment. It was simply caught in a nineteenth Century timewarp. To give you a flavour of the place, the hotel insisted that I wear jacket and tie to dinner. All the tourists there were squeezed into badly fitting, frayed jackets of varying sheen. We all looked a lot smarter when we were in our own clothes. Sadly much else was wrong about the place.
From the room where the beds were actually soggy through damp, to the bathroom that produced no hot water after an hour of trying to pull through to the breakfast toast that had mould on it, every aspect of the Club failed to live up to the most basic expectations of a hotel. The motheaten hunting trophy heads, the warped snooker table and the mildewed chess set added to the pervasive sense that I was in fact boarding in The House of Usher.
So I moved in the morning to ‘The Tea Factory Hotel’, the original recommendation of the agent in Colombo. It was a Tea Factory, and now it is a Hotel – what imaginative titling!! It is a 19th Century style factory, and they’ve left lots of large iron wheels and brass fittings from the factory in the décor of the building.
My room was on the top floor and looked down a valley towards the mountains and World’s End National Park. I went on a little tour round a small tea factory which produces tea from the tea plants around the hotel. The day after I went on a walking trek round the plantation.
When the sun came out and the greens of the trees and tea plants glowed, it made for a nice place to relax for a few days.
The final interesting note about this place was a warning in the room. It says that “When the hotel was built it was constructed to catch the full force of the wind to help dry the tea leaves. This wind howls to this day (and it did!). During the midnight hours, you may also hear drumming and chanting from neighbouring farmers as they endeavour to keep wild boar and buffaloes from destroying their vegetable cultivation. If this is going to disturb your sleep, collect complimentary earplugs from reception.”!!
Awful joke alert...
Q: What do you call a game of hide and seek in a Tea Factory?
A: Pekoe boo
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