Liz Gill samples food and trekking in Sri Lanka and discovers a wealth of other sensory experiences too.
The fields are green, there is a soft rain and last night was so chilly there was a hot water bottle in my bed. I could be in England. In fact I am in ‘Little England’, Nuwara Eliya, high in the Central Mountains of Sri Lanka, an area where the British planted tea and built hotels, offices, bungalows, railways, a red brick post office and golf and race courses.
The Pekoe Trail
Today I’m going to tread in their footsteps by walking the last stage of the 200-mile Pekoe Trail which crosses seven valleys to link towns and villages and train stations, the past and the present.
My guide is Miguel Cunat, a keen hiker and one of the founders of the trail, who realised ten years ago that all the roads built for bullock carts to haul the tea to the factories provided an ideal infrastructure for a long-distance trek. He and his fellow enthusiasts then walked every inch of the trail.
“We wanted to ensure everyone could do it, not just the super fit. We even created an avatar as a starting point: Auntie Perera, a sort of fictional version of the auntie everyone has in Sri Lanka. If she could do it anyone could.”
Some sections are more challenging than others but ours from Kandapola to the Pekoe Tea Factory is a gently undulating six miles though at 6,500 feet even our guide says he notices an effect on the lungs. A Spaniard who moved to the island 20 years ago, Miguel is an ideal companion, ready with snacks, tissues, salt to detach any leeches (fortunately our section does not have them), background information and polite requests in Sinhalese to a family for the use of their loo. They welcome us with the warm smiles that seem to be standard in Sri Lanka.
I get the same – and waves – from the women picking the tea as we pass through the plantations. Traditionally it has always been women who did the picking – they have nimbler, faster fingers – and the men who did the heavy work.
The crop was introduced in 1824 when, nine years after the British had begun their rule, a Scottish planter called James Taylor brought a single plant to what was then Ceylon. Today Sri Lanka is the world’s fourth biggest exporter of tea.
I learn its story during a tour of the Labookellie factory where we see the different processes: the initial drying or ‘withering’ as it’s called, followed by crushing, oxidation and fermentation, further drying and separation into different sizes.
This is followed by a tasting session of half a dozen teas from the familiar black through green to ones I had never heard of like gold, silver and white. The latter, made from tiny buds, have had their oxidation stopped early so they have low or no caffeine. Conversely black tea has the most, the reason I’m fascinated to learn why English Breakfast Tea is so called: it is meant to wake you up in the morning.
Back on the trail I ask Miguel if passersby ever help themselves. Indeed they do, he says, and are known as ‘tea thieves’ who snaffle leaves and roll and dry in their ovens at home.
Tea, Arrack. and Feasting
Our other drink experience was at the opposite end of the scale both in potency and in place. It is arrack and I taste it in the old Portuguese port of Galle in the hot southwest: the Portuguese were the first invaders in the 1600s followed by the Dutch and then the British who were there until independence in 1948.
Although 22m litres of arrack a year are produced, almost none, unlike tea, is ever exported so you have to be on the island to try it out or buy some of its 120 varieties of strengths and flavourings. The Ropewalk Bar at the Galle Fort hotel has 72 of them but I only have time for four. The bar’s name comes from the device of slinging coir ropes between the tops of coconut trees so that the workers who gathered the sap from the unopened flowers from which the drink is made did not have to climb up and down every time.
Arrack, my tasting guide Claire explains, is halfway between whisky and rum “It’s not as burning as whisky and not as sugary as rum.” The sap is naturally high in sugar and yeast so the ‘toddy’ as it is known is five percent alcohol before it even reaches the ground. Further fermentation and distillation then dilution produces a drink that is around 30 to 36 percent. Variables like soil, weather, collection times and barrel types all affect taste. I enjoyed each of them and was just sorry not to be able to stay for a cocktail with elderflower and coriander or a mix with ginger beer, yet another example of enduring British influence.
A key part of the enjoyment of my tea and arrack times was the setting, an experience repeated at various meals. One of the most delicious was at a little village by Lake Hiriwadunna in Sigiriya, where a spread of chicken, fried fish, dhal and various vegetables including peppers, cabbage and jackfruit could have come from a state-of-the-art kitchen. Instead, it was made in a little mud walled one and cooked over a simple wood fire with basic tools.
Before I sat down I was shown how to use a couple of these: to remove coconut from its shell by rubbing it over a curved piece of wood and then how to pound the salt, chilli and onions that would be added to it to make the universal accompaniment of sambal by rolling a round piece of stone over a flat one. The setting was made even more enchanting by the fact that I had reached it part way by bullock cart and the rest of the way by little catamarans whose boatsmen made us necklaces and hats from lotus leaves and water lilies.
On another day at the spiritual resort of Ridee Viharayay I combine a walk through the forest, a meditation session, a visit to its Silver Temple and a demonstration of how ola leaves have been turned into books for over two thousand years with a wonderful vegetarian lunch, the dishes helpfully explained on the back of the menu.
On a third I join a Tamil family at their home in Kandapola where the 1,000 strong community has its own colourful Hindu temple to make traditional mandalas by filling rice powder designs with coloured rice, to dress up in sarees and vettis and to cook steamed idli and deep fried vada snacks which I ate with coconut chutney.
Hosts, Suresh and wife Pria, pointed out that on the terraces behind their home it is English vegetables which are grown: potatoes, cabbages, carrots, leeks. At lower altitudes too, one is similarly never far from food sources: rice paddy fields stretch either side of the road, trees bearing jackfruit, cashews, figs and oranges line country tracks. And at the splendid Royal Botanical Gardens in Peradeniya my guide points out nutmeg, peppercorns, cloves and cinnamon.
A Feast For All the other Senses
Sri Lanka is, of course, a feast for all the senses, not just taste and the range of sights and sounds in an island barely a third of the UK is extraordinary. Ours included visiting The Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, one of the most holy places in Buddhism, watching a display of Kandyan dancing and drumming (followed by a joining in session), shopping at a batik factory and at a factory making lovely household items and knick-knacks from wastepaper.
I did two safaris. One was elephant themed, and I saw several, although nothing quite compared to the thrill a few hours earlier of seeing one strolling along the side of the road, completely unperturbed by the traffic chaos of lorries, tuk-tuks, bikes, scooters and cars.
I also spotted elephants in the Yala National Park on the southeast coast along with deer, water buffalo, crocodiles, monitor lizards and a mongoose. Sadly I never spotted any of the 200 leopards that live in the park but this a big place and the creatures are famously elusive. What I also delighted in were the number of birds the park has: an ornithology enthusiast in our group identified over 20. Not only could we see them at pretty close quarters, but they continuously filled the air with their calls and song.
Another sweet sensory Sri Lankan experience.
Tell me more about Sri Lanka’s Food and trekking experiences
Visit Sri Lanka provides more information on the activities here and for all over Sri Lanka.
Visit The Pekoe Trail for more information on this fascinating trek
Sri Lanka Airlines fly direct to Colombo from London Heathrow
Jetwing hotels have over 20 hotels around the island
Blue Lanka Tours offers a wide range of guided tours including a 6 nights, 7 days cultural tour which includes Sigiriya, Dambulla, Kandy and Colombo for £1472. A more detailed and extensive one of 13 nights/14 days one which includes the Central Highlands and tea growing areas is £3277
