Tea Plantations and Tropical Mingers

It was time for us to leave Kandy and head up into hill country – Nuwara Eliya. Nuwara Eliya is most famous for its tea plantations, so of course we travelled up the winding roads into the rolling hillside to take a tour around a tea plantation. We saw how they process the leaves in the factory, saw the ladies picking the tea leaves in the fields and were told about the different types of tea produced in Sri Lanka. Being from a tea guzzling nation, it was quite interesting to see where my favourite evening beverage comes from.

At the end of our factory tour we were given a cup of tea each and were also able to purchase some tea bags or tea leaves to take home. Even though this is most likely the PG Tips we drink at home anyway, it was nice to buy some tea straight from the source.

After a quick lunch pit stop overlooking Ramboda Falls (the 11th highest waterfall in Sri Lanka, I might add), it was onwards to our accommodation in Nuwara Eliya, St Andrews Hotel – a former country house “reminiscent of the days of the British Rulers”.

The first thing that struck me about this hotel was that upon greeting us, they gave us each a warm flannel and a small cup of hot soup to drink, whereas all the other hotels greeted us with cold flannels and icy beverages. Yes Nuwara Eliya is alot cooler than the rest of Sri Lanka but it really wasn’t that cold! Nice touch still. What was even nicer here was that hubby and I received a room upgrade and a free cake because it was our honeymoon, St Andrews definitely won with the honeymoon perks here.

We were given a few hours at leisure to explore the town centre of Nuwara Eliya before meeting the rest of our tour group for dinner. As town was only a short walk away, we decided we might as well go for a little wander. It turns out that me and my husband were the only ones who actually bothered to get out there and explore, everyone else fell asleep or something equally lame.

You snooze, you lose. I came back from town with a bargain. I bought myself a sari for about 3000 LKR (£15 GBP) and so that was my outfit for our final dinner together as a tour group.

We had a lovely dinner together, everyone admired my sari too!

The next day we all bid each other a farewell and a bon voyage, some of the group were heading home and some were spending a few days relaxing at Bentota Beach. Our tour came about full circle as our final stop in Sri Lanka was back to where it all began at Mount Lavinia.

We had a delicious alfresco candlelit meal that evening, just the two of us. And we toasted our wonderful adventure with a cocktail called a ‘Minger’. Much amusement. Incase you aren’t familiar with British slang, the word ‘minger’ is used to describe someone or something unattractive, I have no idea what it means in Sri Lanka but the cocktails were yummy!