Sri Lanka
Colombo, Sri Lanka
This was a late port addition to our itinerary. It was added when Myanmar was dropped. We stopped in Colombo which is the largest
city and was the capital until a few years ago.
I had no clue until a guide said something that this country had
declared bankruptcy in late 2022. It
really did not affect us except that it explained some of the half-built
construction sites that we saw. The
Chinese our helping build/expand the port which is all shipping except for a
berth or 2 for cruise ships. They are also
financing a new highway around the port.
Sri Lanka is another former British colony so driving on the left-hand
side of the road and English heavily spoken.
The populace is well educated too with the highest literacy rate in the
region – 90+% so probably as high as USA if not higher. Tea and cinnamon are two of the major
products most will recognize from Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon at one time so if you know Ceylon tea you
know Sri Lanka tea.
Tea Plantation
We chose to visit a tea plantation the first day we were in port. It was the Ingiriya Tea Plantation up in the hills of the country. It was a 1 ½ hour drive to the plantation. Along the way our guide told us some about the history of Sri Lanka and taught us about rubber plantations and other agricultural products. We saw lots of small rice fields along the way. We stopped at an old British road house for a rest stop. It was a beautiful setting with large trees (including Bread Fruit) and a few monkeys.
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| British Road House |
Most of the agriculture in this
country is small and has not changed in hundreds of years so done in very
manual ways. For example, with the tea
it is all picked by hand. It is partly
done that way because the tea plantation we went to is very high quality tea so
only new growth is picked. Apparently in
India and some other places it is done by machinery and more of the plant is
picked. Back to our tour. They showed us how they tap rubber trees for
the sap that becomes latex/rubber.
Natural rubber is regaining its popularity over manmade but there is a
staffing problem (never heard that problem anywhere else lately have we!).
We then moved on to the tea plantation itself. Tea plants are a relative of camelias. There were fields of the plant with a few trees for shade. The tea
plantation is an old-fashioned factory town.
The women pick the leaves, the men weed, etc; there is a school for the
younger kids, a hospital and housing is provided. There is also a group of people that work
inside the plant. They pick the leaves
in the morning take a break and then again in the afternoon. The workers are heavily of Indian descent
because the Sri Lankans were not willing to work for the English when the
plantations were established. It came
across as a hard life.
The ladies pick a kilos worth of leaves at a time dumping
the leaves in a bag they wear on their heads.
The bags are then put in a trailer that is taken up to the factory where
the bags are lifted up to the second floor of the factory. All of the equipment in the factory is pretty
much a 100 years old so not a fancy process.
The leaves are immediately spread out on tables to dry with hot air
blowing on them. I think it was 12 hours
that leaves are set to dry and then they are moved on in the process. There was a crushing machine to break up the
small stems and leaves there were several lines with sifting sheets to get the
small pieces out and then send the larger ones to be crushed/broken again. After being broken up the leaves are again
set aside to dry. After drying the one
new machine a color sorter was used to sort the leaves by their color. The different colors become different
quality/types of tea. They sift and sort
and dry the leaves several times before they consider them ready for
packaging. This was all loose tea no tea
bags here! It was quite interesting but
also quite warm in the factory. It smelled wonderful.
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| Bottom right is new machine with 7 cameras to grade and sort tea leaves |
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| Drying table |
After the factory itself, we went to the manager’s house to try some of this tea and of course for the opportunity to buy some. The factory manager’s house was originally built as a cottage by an Englishman so that was part of the allure to see a former Englishman’s /historical house. The house was nice. You could tell that it had been designed with air flow in mind. A couple of walls were actually decorative concrete trellis(?) work so not solid walls. It was quite nice.
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| 100+ year old home |
Night tour of Colombo and dance
Jeff and I had planned a full day for our first of 2 days in Colombo because we also signed up for a nighttime tour with dinner and a native dance show. The nighttime tour was nice because you could see the buildings lit up which is really good for their pride and joy the Lotus Tower. The Lotus Tower is a new building that is a communications tower with a restaurant on a top floor. The building has a lotus flower look to the middle floors – it is a nice-looking building. Jeff and I had to smile because our dinner and dance program was at the Colombo Hilton Hotel and while it was indoors it did make us think of the Luau we had at the Hawaii Hilton a few years ago.
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| Top Left Lotus Tower changes color at night |
Pinnawala Elephant Sanctuary
On our second day in Sri Lanka, we started out on another long bus ride this time to see Elephants at a sanctuary. We saw some of the same scenery from the day before. Then all of a sudden, our bus was pulling over to the side of the road and we got off while our guides got us tickets. We were right by a narrow lane with shops on either side of it that went downhill – heading for the river. When our guide came back, we started down the lane only to slide off to the left side at one point so a couple of elephants could walk past us.
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| Few Asian Elephants have tusks |
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| The Twins |
The sanctuary has 2 parts the river area and then the main sheds and pens. I definitely preferred the river area. The view was very pretty, and the elephants seemed happier to me. We watched the elephants at the river and had seats from a balcony area for a buffet lunch. These elephants have been at this sanctuary too long, so they won’t ever be released back into the wild. The fun/interesting thing at this site is that they have a set of twins that were born 2021. They were fun to watch in the water and then to see up close later in the pens. Twins is quite rare for elephants. The second one was born 5 hours after the first and was quite weak, so they think that often in the wild the second one dies. With that lovely thought I will end this entry!
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| They hurried over when the water came on |
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| Made from Palm Fronds |
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