Tales from Sri Lanka

Today we make the trip back home to Kosgoda. However, first we make a stop at a tea factory just outside of Kandy. Before we even step in the front door to the tea factory I can smell…tea, the smell is so pungent it’s like the walls have been sprayed with ice tea. When we enter we are blasted with a heat wave and the smell gets a whole lot stronger.

We are shown how the tea gets made. First the leaves are ‘withered’. They sit in massive containers that stretch as far as an Olympic size swimming pool and a fan blows underneath to them, to ensure all the moisture is taken out. One that is done, the tea leaves need to go down a chute to the next level where they are crushed and then ‘fired’, and the end product is the dried chopped up leaves that we dunk into hot water.

As it is a Sunday, none of the pickers are working, however we are still able to walk around the tea plantation. It is beautiful. Rows upon rows upon rows of tea bushes cover the landscape, all in neat lines as fall down the hillside into the valley. It looks pretty impressive. One of the workers shows us how to pick the plants, and also shows us a few coffee bean trees, which are a little out of place, but pretty cool.

After the tea plantation we all pile into our mini-bus for the journey home. As the scenery changes from lush greenery to palm tree again, we know we are almost home. A really good weekend.