Anyone For Tea?

Today we made the journey from Kandy to Nurawa Eliya, which at over 1800 metres high is noticeably cooler than anywhere else we've been.

This is Sri Lanka's tea growing area and the road climbed through miles and miles of plantations where female pickers work from dawn to dusk, picking just the top two leaves and the bud from each twig, placing them in sacks on their backs.

They have to pick 19 kilograms of leaves each day to earn the basic wage ( which seems to equate to £5 a day), although apparently some of them can pick twice that amount and are paid accordingly.

This lady works in one of the factories and is transporting the dried leaves to the feeder which drops them to the floor below where they are broken down and processed into the tea we know.

Artulla, who has been our guide and driver for the week, was brought up on a tea plantation in the 1950s: his father was chauffeur to the Scottish owner and, when Sri Lanka's President Mrs Bandaranayeke nationalised the plantations and the Scottish owner packed up and headed home, along with many others, he left Artulla's father all his belongings , including his car. His father used the proceeds to give Artulla and his 7 siblings the best education he could. His gratitude to his father and his Scottish benefactor is very evident.

Nurawa Eliya, known as Little England, was built to house British families and much of the architecture remains British.