Nuwara Eliya and World’s End

Much as I’ve adored my time in Kandy, Jarrod, it’s time to move on–and the time has come to head to cooler climes. Hello, Nuwara Eliya! After lugging a goddamn polar fleece around in 30 degree plus, 90% humidity weather for weeks, and resentfully wishing that I had used that valuable backpack realestate for more clean T-Shirts (honestly, I am a perspiration machine, sweat’s pouring out of me like I’m a very unappealing water feature), I will finally have a need to pull that fleecy bad boy on and (reels) cover up my forearms. I might even have to (gasp) DON A SCARF AS WELL.

I’m hoping to catch the train from Kandy to Nanu Oya but alas, I’m in Sri Lanka during school holiday period, and the train is well and truly booked. So I plan B it and opt to catch a bus instead. The journey is two and a bit hours and a ticket for myself and my pack is $4AUD. Silver lining, on the bus I meet some absolutely lovely fellow travellers, Arnaud and Azaria (yes, she has been told about the other Azaria by literally every Australian that she meets) and we decide to spend the day together. We agree to dump our packs at respective accomodation places and reconvene at the bus station at midday.

The three of us have decided to split the cost of a tuk tuk to go and explore a tea plantation, and we’ve decided to go to the Mackwoods Labookellie centre. Partly because we have read that after the tour you get tea and delicious cake in their cafe. Also because as you’re travelling on the bus through the tea plantations to get to Nuwara Eliya, you see Labookeillie signs roughly every 100m and we’ve probably been somewhat brainwashed. Labookeillie. Labookeillie. Labookeille.

A big Hollywood style sign greets you on arrival, no doubt reassuring aspiring tea leaves that they’ve made it, they’ve finally reached Mackwoods where they might get their big break…

And hey, they just might. Provided their big career goals involve being plucked, withered, rolled, fermented, dried, sifted, packed, sold and ultimately plunged into boiling water and ingested with a slice of chocolate cake. Hey, it’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it.

We relish our cup of tea and cake after the tour of the Tea Centre, and then head back to Nuwara Eliya itself, because we have a date with High Tea At The Grand. Yes, we are following tea and cake with more tea and cake. What of it? On the way back we spot tea pickers at work, brightly dotting the verdant green hillsides and grab a few photos. Each of these tea pickers will pluck between 10 and 18 kg of leaves per day. I’m definitely walking away from today very diuresed, from drinking so many cups of tea, yet with a renewed appreciation of just how much work has gone into said cups.

High Tea at The Grand costs roughly $8AUD, which would buy you a large latte and a slice of banana bread at McCafe at home.  So for High Tea, it’s kind of a bargain. And The Grand is fancy. As in rooms start at US $200 fan-cy. I feel criminally underdressed but they don’t bat an eye.

The High Tea is delicious and we waddle out full of savoury pastries, sweet treats and bottomless cups of tea. I could really get used to seemingly magic refills.

I have plans to hike to World’s End on the morning of Day 2, but wake to find it’s drizzly with zero visibility so I bunker back down under the duvet and take the day slowly. After a forgettable breakfast (I’m at a hotel rather than a home stay, and aghast to find breakkie a) isn’t included, I have to PAY EXTRA and b) when it does come: it’s an overboiled egg, grey around the yolk, with toast that tastes like balsa wood) I decide to head out to see another tea plantation. The man at the desk of the hotel is bewildered by this, and asks me gently if I remember I went to a plantation yesterday. I reassure him that I’m not brain injured, I do recall that, and much as I enjoyed Mackwoods, I’d like to see one where you can wander about a bit more and not be restricted to a tour and cafe. Bluefield Tea Gardens it is, then!

I’m taken on another tour (they go for all of ten minutes) and tap into my very best acting skills to give the appearance of someone who is definitely hearing this information for the first time and not just looking forward to another cup of tea and cake.

Then: reward!

Fortified, I have some time to wander around and I head up the path at the rear of the factory to see the pretty plantations.

Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World would have been a very repetitive ditty if he’d written it whilst in tea country.

Some enterprising ladies call out to me and lure me up a hillside where they indicate they’re happy to pose for photos. It’s quite obviously a low key tourist trap of sorts, they certainly don’t have any bags nearby to indicate that they’re in the middle of picking 18kg of tea leaves. They’re either just carrying handfuls of leaves down to the tea centre and then climbing back up to repeat the cycle (very inefficient)… Or they have cottoned on that people like me love a good photo and it’s an easy way to make a few bucks. Whatever, I’m happy to oblige and take a few pics, and give them some $$.

From the tea gardens, I head off to see the beautiful Seetha Amman Temple and then it’s back to town again, where I resist the pull of going for a second high tea. My willpower is verging on the superhuman.

The next day I’m up criminally early for a 5am departure to visit Horton Plains National Park. It’s bitterly cold and windy, and I’m #grateful to have my fleece, as well as a beanie I’ve picked up for $2AUD the day prior. We get to the park around 6am and queue for tickets and start our hike to World’s End around 6:30. After hiking for about 45 minutes, we reach little World’s End– kind of an appetiser for the main event, I guess?

Most of the guides and reviews on Trip Advisor stress the need to set off early, lest you get to Worlds End after 9am when it will be blanketed in fog and this mist rolling in makes us quite nervous…

So we head off at a pace not dissimilar to Olympic speed walkers.

Horton Plains is honestly almost other worldly. Undulating plains, craggy trees, sections of jungle, it’s as though you’ve stumbled onto a set for Lord Of The Rings.

We huff and we puff and we get to World’s End….

The view is absolutely, utterly gorgeous. Vindicated! If this is the way the world ends, I can categorically say the apocalypse is going to be quite windy, but actually very pretty.

A handful of other tourists are there at the same time and taking selfies so I turn my phone camera to front facing and OH THE GRAVITY OF THIS ERROR. When you have gotten up at 4.30am and been walking in the wind and there is a bitterly cold wind still blowing right in your eyes, there is no filter that can help you. None. What about snapcha-? NONE I SAID!!

The mist rolls in almost bang on time, and a steady rain is beginning to fall so we stow our cameras away and leave World’s End as other tourists arrive, their disappointed utterances and bemoaning gradually fading into the distance… The walk back is equally gorgeous. Apologies for the low res on the following photos but they were taken on the phone b/c it was too wet to pull the camera out!

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Nuwara Eliya had something for everyone, Jarrod. Tea. Cake. Trekking. Tea. Cake. Temple. Tea. Cake. As always though, I’ll throw the big question over to you. Nuwara Eliya and World’s End, Jarrod, would you go there?