Monday 2 March 2015

Ella, Where Babies Come From

After my sook last post about hanging out with too many tourists in the train's second class we instead went third class to Ella, in a carriage full of Chinese... Awesome. It was another stunning journey that at one point forced a huge chorus of "Waaaaaaaaa!!" from the entire carriage. It was all worth it for that.


Ella itself is a nice little untouristed town set high up in the mountains with just a couple of shops for supplies and a nice laid back feel. Well that's what it would have been like ten years ago. Now the main strip is full of overpriced eating and "chilling" establishments charging more for a pot of tea than we've been paying for entire meals. Ella did provided us with some nice memories though.

The first night we headed to the pub for a couple and our casual conversation took an interesting turn when an Arrak-ed up Sri Lankan sat down with us for a few minutes. In broken English he asked and then reconfirmed about five times over if we had a baby and then took it upon himself to do something about us not having one. He began chanting a prayer at Nix's stomach (that's where babies come from yeah?) for her to soon become pregnant. Beers and a baby, nice one pal. And then we got photos to commemorate the moment.


The following day we set off up Little Adam's Peak, the little brother of Adam's Peak. A nice stroll through tea fields and epic 360 degree views at the top made for a fairly easy but very beautiful trek. 



The pooches at the top were also very welcoming. 


We continued on to Newburgh Tea Estate. Woo, more tea. This time green tea as well, oh boy. 


Despite only wanting to try some of their tea we got sucked into another tour. At least this one finished with a sampling of each of the different green teas that they produce. The other two tours have gone into excruciating detail to inform you that a cup of tea is never just a cup of tea and detailing the different varieties that they produce for them to finish the tour by saying, "and now I will get you a cup of tea", and not providing any information on what specific tea is in your cup.


Anyway, the key difference between green and black tea is that green tea doesn't go through a fermentation stage like black tea must. There you go, you don't even have to go to Sri Lanka now.

The highlight of our few nights was a Sunday spent watching the Ella cricket team battle it out on an old cracked clay pitch against local rivals Uva. Dogs, mopeds and trucks on the field were fair play and there was no d*cking around hitting singles, it was go big or go home.


Goodbye hill country, thermal necessitating weather and tea. Goodbye forever, tea!