20/2/24

Awake early but stayed in our huge bed, got up and did some yoga then went for breakfast which was immense, not that I was able to eat much of it but I packed up the sausage and egg knowing that I’d run into a dog that would benefit.

We then left our digs and walked to the Uva Halpewatte tea plantation. It took about an hour and a half but lovely walking through the countryside, inevitably we had some hills to climb and the one up to the plantation was about 2km of upward climbing but great when we reached the top. We cooled off outside waiting for the next tour which started around 11.45. Tour was really interesting, Haplewatte produce green and black tea, we tasted at the end and all were quite nice but I preferred the lighter less tannin teas. About 1 we caught a tuktuk into town, picked up our laundry and some of supplies. We then walked back through town to the station and then onto the tracks to walk back to our hotel. Showered and repacked, inevitably bits are missing from the laundry, in this case I’m two pairs of pants down! Next we head off to Green Grow Cookery, the idea being that we’d be shown how to cook Sri Lankan food our dinner. The location couldn’t have been better, directly opposite our hotel! The session was run by Tutti and Komari (his Aunty). They have an organic garden that they’ve established about 3 months ago and they’ve only been running the cooking classes about 2 weeks, we were their third customers according to their visitors book. It was a great evening. We started at 5pm picked some produce from the garden then prepared and cooked; beetroot curry, green bean curry, Dahl, chicken curry (not for me!), rice, a sambal (salad). We sat down to eat all this at around 8pm, incredible. We left them around 8.30 and after sorting out the final bit of packing turned the lights out at 10.30 as we’re up early to catch the train out of Ella to Nuwara Elia at 5.30am.