Thursday, November 23, 2017

Ella

From Kandy we travelled up into the highlands. We were over 2000 metres at times and it was a lot cooler. We did take a jacket but didn't need them. The cooler climate attracted the British to move to this region and many grand homes remain. It is also the centre of the tea industry after coffee production was destroyed by disease.


Before leaving Kandy we went to a high viewpoint with great views over the lake and the town.


Taken from the same spot of the large Buddha that you might be able to make out in the previous photo.


On the outskirts of the town near the university we stopped at this great tree. This is as high as we could manage!

The temperature fell as we climbed higher into the mountains. The tea plantations dominated.


                                                    One of the local tea pickers.


Normally the tea is picked by Tamil women but Rob was a master. If you pick just the one top leaf then it is made into Silver Tip tea, top two leaves for green tea or top three leaves for black tea and this one is fermented.


The women are paid Rs2000 or less than $A20 for 18 kg of leaves. Rob would have earned about 5 cents!

We drove on. Today we must have gone around over 100 hairpin bends. Very windy mountainous road.


                              One of the many waterfalls that we passed on the way.


                                    No sunset photo but this is the view from our room in Ella.

Ella is a "hippy" type of town, popular with backpackers. Instead of staying in the town we were at "Heaven's Edge" up on the mountain top. The views the next morning were spectacular.


                                                The view from our balcony.


I took so many photos that I could have made it into a time lapse video!!



2 comments:

Amanda said...

Alex liked the photos of Grandad picking tea, and Harrison wants to know if you drank any of the tea you picked.

Unknown said...

I'll have the fermented ones thanks