To tell the truth or to keep this little slice of paradise a secret? That is the question....
Ok I'll share, but only because it was so frigging amazing!!
After spending the first night in Colombo and on the advice of others who have been to Sri Lanka before, we got out of the city pronto and headed for Galle.
Once occupied by the Dutch and English it was very much a fusion of European architecture and Sri Lankan culture and food.
We stopped by Uda Walawe National park for a morning safari and animal spotting. We spied many elephants, jackals, buffalo, monkeys, a large assortment of different birds, some that had migrated from as far away as Russia. We watched as a peacock took flight. I didn't even know they could fly until that morning!!
From wild animals to the tea plantations of Haputale in the hill country.
We stayed with a local family in a cute little cottage perched on the edge if a cliff. The view out of our window was phenomenal.
Ned and I spent two night sleep over in Haputale and even though our cottage views rivalled those of World's End, it did not stop us from rising early and doing a 9.5km walk to see World's End in Horton Plains National park.
What breath taking views!!
We think we heard a leopard and we definitely heard monkeys!
We departed Haputale bound for Nanu Oya on what would be our first train journey and far out...the vistas were out of this world!! Choo chooing along the mountain ridges with both sides dropping away steeply covered with thousands of tea plants.
From Nanu Oya we caught the local bus from the train station to Nuwara Eliya. The bus was so full that it made the central line in London at peak hour look empty and with the roads in atrocious conditions, it made for a very slow, bumpy and hot trip into town.
Nuwara Eliya also known as "little England" was more of a tourist spot and I think this made it a little less enjoyable. We only stayed here for one night before heading to Dalhousie to tackle Adam's Peak.
In the morning we took a tuk-tuk to Blue Field tea factory to see how they transform a waxy green leaf into a delicious cup of tea.
The "pluckers" (woman who pluck the tea leaves from the plant) bring hessian bags of leaves carried on their heads to factory where it is dried, grinded, dried further in a wood fired kiln that was imported from Belfast, Northern Ireland over a century ago, graded and then sent to Colombo to be auctioned and turned into brands such as Liptons, Dilmah etc.
From 2 tonnes of leaves they finish with 500kgs of tea!! The tour is fittingly finished with a free cuppa.
We caught another train from Hattan bound for Delhousie.
You could never get sick of the views, the people watching, the pluckers and the hilarious reactions and facial expressions of the kids when they see a fair skinned, lighter coloured hair Western with her fairer skinned, red bearded (edit; strawberry brown thanks -Ned) boyfriend. Utterly priceless!! And their parents bringing them over to us and forcing their children to say hello to us. One man even wanted me to kiss his kids!! The kids weren't so keen on this idea and I can't say that I can blame them either!!
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