Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Lankan tangle, but scratch the surface a little to reveal colonial bungalows, well-tended
hedgerows and pretty rose gardens.
In earlier times, Nuwara Eliya (meaning 'City of Light') was the favoured cool-climate
escape for the hard-working and hard-drinking English and Scottish pioneers of Sri
Lanka's tea industry. A rainy-day, misty-mountain atmosphere blankets the town from
November to February so don't come expecting tropical climes. But during April's spring
release, the town is crowded with domestic holidaymakers enjoying horse racing and
sports-car hill climbs, and celebrating the Sri Lankan New Year. The cost of accommoda-
tion escalates wildly, and Nuwara Eliya becomes a busy, busy party town. For the rest of
the year, the economy is based on tea, cool-climate vegetables, tourism and even more tea.
Treat yourself to a night at one of Nuwara Eliya's colonial hotels, play a round of golf and
a few frames of billiards, and escape into the town's curious combination of heritage and
the here-and-now.
The town has an abundance of touts eager to get a commission for a guesthouse or
hotel. They'll intercept you on arrival at Nanu Oya train station with fabricated reports of
accommodation being closed, cockroach-infested or just plain crooked. Just ignore them.
History
Originally an uninhabited system of forests and meadows in the shadow of Pidurutalagala
(aka Mt Pedro, 2524m), Nuwara Eliya became a singularly British creation, having been
'discovered' by colonial officer John Davy in 1819 and chosen as the site for a sanatorium
a decade later.
Later the district became known as a spot where 'English' vegetables and fruits, such as
lettuce and strawberries, could be successfully grown for consumption by the colonists.
Coffee was one of the first crops grown here, but after the island's coffee plantations failed
due to disease, the colonists switched to tea. The first tea leaves harvested in Sri Lanka
were planted at Loolecondera Estate, in the mountains between Nuwara Eliya and Kandy.
As tea experiments proved successful, the town quickly found itself becoming the Hill
Country's 'tea capital', a title still proudly borne.
As elsewhere in the Hill Country, most of the labourers on the tea plantations were
Tamils, brought from southern India by the British. Although the descendants of these
'Plantation Tamils' (as they are called to distinguish them from Tamils in northern Sri
Lanka) have usually stayed out of the ethnic strife that has rocked Jaffna and the North,
Search WWH ::




Custom Search