Sri Lanka: 'Upcountry'

You would find it hard to imagine that in a tropical island like Sri Lanka, there would be places where the temperature would drop to freezing. I didn’t believe it myself until I went to Nuwara Eliya.

Nuwara Eliya is where all Sri Lankans go to beat the heat. It’s up in the hills, in the heart of the tea country. When we went in March, there was a delicious nip in the air. We could imagine how chilling the winters must be.

The best way to get there is to drive there. The road snakes through tea plantations, and there are plenty of diversions en route if you are in the mood to stop and look. There’s the place where ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ was shot, and Adam’s Peak. We didn’t have much time though, just 3 days, so we kept driving on instead.

A must-visit when you are in Nuwara Eliya is the Tea Factory Hotel. A terribly bumpy ride takes you there, and it is some way off from the town, but it’s worth all the trouble. Like the name says, it’s an abandoned tea factory that was converted into a hotel. Packing crates form the bar, and most of the machinery is still intact.

Also worth visiting is Horton Plains, a primeval forest, that’s approachable by another scary road. The best time to be there is before dawn, a time unfortunately when all of us were cosily dreaming in bed. You could also visit the Hakgala Botanical Gardens, but the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens near Kandy are better.

Kandy is also in the hill country, but not as cold. It’s the cultural capital of Sri Lanka. I went there in August to witness the Esala Perahera, an annual procession when the tooth relic from the Temple of the Tooth is paraded around the city accompanied by hundreds of elephants, dancers, acrobats and what not. Frankly though, there’s a limit to the number of elephants you can keep watching, it just gets repetitive.

Other cultural sights in Kandy are the Temple of the Tooth itself, and the famed Kandyan dancers. Other sidelights are the Pinewala Elephant Orphanage and the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens, with its exotic double coconut trees whose nuts weigh 20 kg.

If it’s culture though you are looking for, the places to go are further north of Kandy – the cultural triangle of Anuradhapura, Dambulla and Sigiriya. I haven’t been there myself, but the pictures of Sigiriya really make me wish I’d made a trip there. Perhaps another time.