Sri Lanka... Day 3

Day 3 in Sri Lanka and we woke to this amazing foggy mist. It was surreal. I know I keep saying words like beautiful and amazing and incredible but, honestly, words don't do this place justice at all... 

Slowly but surely the sun started to chase the fog away.

After breakfast we headed to the train station to catch our train to tea country. I'm going to go ahead and apologize in advance... this was my absolute favorite day in Sri Lanka and I have a ton of pictures to share! 

All of us waiting!

Stella, Quinn, and Kai

The train arrived and we boarded and attempted to find our seats. The car we were in was filled with a large group of eastern Europeans who would not get out of the way and sit down. Tammy's angry asian had to come out but we finally got it sorted and settled into our seats.

The kids absolutely LOVED the train! After spending so much time in the van traveling to and from our destinations, the train was a much needed respite and fun experience. 

The weather was fantastic-- it was warm but not terribly hot and with the windows open on the train we got a great breeze. Stella and Quinn spent the first part of the trip hanging out the windows waving at everyone and having a ball! 

After a short time we were out of the city and into the mountains...

And again... it was just breathtaking.

And then the kids napped... and yes, she was really asleep with her head and arms out the window!

I ended up with a little cuddle buddy

And as we got further up into the mountains, we started to see tea fields!

There was a bit of drama at the end of the ride... we ended up missing our stop! There was a miscommunication with what stop we were to get off at and our tickets just read the full ride from the start of the line to the end. So through a broken phone call that could barely be heard over the train noise, we figured it out with Predeep and got off at the next stop. Our schedule changed a bit but it worked out!

The crazy part? There was a huge drop off from the train to the platform and I was holding a still sleeping Stella. Everyone got off before me and I had no other choice but to jump... while holding Stella. It was fairly insane but it was jump or get left on the train! Needless to say the abrupt landing woke her up (though I did land on my feet..haha!)

Our first stop was an overlook at one of two waterfalls in the area!

We stopped for lunch at a tea plantation

Buddha at the tea plantation

This is before Stella jumped up and leaned over that rampart, scaring the crap our of poor Christine!

The kids and Predeep

Stella and her iced tea

The amazing tea shop!

Just a few bits of tea....

Seriously in my happy place!

Walking through the fields

Back in the van we started heading towards our Bungalow for the night. Along the way we saw the tea pickers dropping off their leaves to get weighed-- they are paid by weight. Typically each of those bags has 10 kilograms of tea leaves in it. The pickers, who are only women, are paid by the kilo and typically pick 25-30 kilos per day. Their pay? Around $13 per DAY. $13 a day. They work from about 7am to 4 pm and carry large bags that are tied around their heads and pick constantly--every leaf counting towards weight and towards the money they'll make. They live in small villages on the plantations they work for and their housing is provided for them. The men do the hard labor around the plantations since they don't pick tea leaves-- maintenance, cleaning, working the fields and roads, and the like. 

Our beautiful bungalow for the night! They were renovating a few of the other rooms so we had the entire place to ourselves! It was awesome!!! The bungalow itself is 138 years old and they've only just opened it up to guests recently. They're renovating and updating it and while it wasn't fancy or over the top, it was clean and fairly well cared for. There were some quirks that come with an old property, but it was really cool, especially since we had to ourselves. 

We arrived to afternoon tea

Our room. We made use of that mosquito netting that night. The bugs love tea also, apparently. 

After finishing our tea we climbed back into the van and headed to a tea factory for a tour! When we arrived we saw this truck unloading the leaves from the afternoons work. 

Our guide began our tour and we basically went on the journey the tea leaf goes on. From picking it gets taken to be weighed and then on to the factory. The first stop it comes to at the factory is to these drying tables. Only about 22% of the weight is actual tea-- the rest is moisture and it has to be dried out of the leaves before it can continue. There are these huge fans that pull the moisture out of the leaves. It takes roughly 17 hours to dry the leaves and they're flipped after 9 hours to make sure and dry them thoroughly. 

Our tour guide let us put our hands on the leaves and move them around. You could feel the air underneath them and if you made a hole in the leaves, they'd fly up around you. 

About 1000 kilos of leaves on each one of those beds

After they are dried they get dropped down a chute and onto this machine-- its the roller and it rolls the leaves up. If they aren't dried they will break and not roll but when they're properly dried, they roll right up! This process takes about 20 minutes.

The machine in action

After rolling they go into this machine which is sort of like a blender 

After that, they go to this next machine which shakes out the stems and small bits and leaves the larger leaves (how this works I'm not entirely sure since they've gone through a "blender-like" machine... unless there was something lost in translation, which is entirely possible!

From there the tea goes on to the next room on this conveyer belt

and its off to the dryer for 21 minutes

He let us feel and smell some of the dust that was small and being collected in those large drums

From there it moves to the fibre extractor 

and then continues to be sifted and the unwanted bits sifted out and its sorted by quality. 

Two different types of tea-- Pekoe and the dust 

In the packaging room! So much tea!

Each bag was almost as large as her!

Unfortunately, and my only complaint about the whole tour, we weren't able to taste any tea. They were preparing for some buyers to visit and were setting up for their tasting. I think this was the point that when our schedule changed because of the train mix up, we missed out on being able to have a tasting which was pretty disappointing but it is what it is. The tour was still great!

We headed back to the bungalow and the owner, Reemas offered to take us on a tour of the plantation. He also happily obliged the kids and let them pick some tea leaves!

The really amazing thing about tea plants is that after 7 days the leaves have grown back and can be harvested again! You can harvest tea from the same plant for 100 years! Every 5-6 years they have to cut them down a bit and trim them to maintain their size and the quality of the tea. 

Reemas told us all about the plantation that his father bought. Years and years ago one woman owned 1800 acres of land in the area, including the property we were staying on. The Sri Lankan government took all but 150 acres from her. Reemas' father purchased the land and now they own it and run it. They own another bungalow on the property that they live in and Reemas took on the older property to turn into a guest house. The government won't give up any of the tea land so if you want to have a house it has to be one thats already built-- you can tear it down and build anew, but you can't lose any of the tea plants. 

So there are trees planted all throughout the tea fields and when it rains the trees soak up water and during any dry season or drought, the trees water the tea plants with their root system. Its a really neat, all natural symbiotic watering system. 

Everywhere we turned there was an incredible view. And we were walking around during that magic time of day when the sun is setting and the light is just perfect. The mist had started to roll in a bit and it was quiet and peaceful and just stunning. 

There are 127 women picking tea and 32 men working on the property. Theres a small village on the property and as we walked the fields, he took us to there. 

Along the way we passed by small, run down shacks that was where the villagers lived. At only $13 a day their lives aren't extravagant. They don't have giant televisions or fancy cars. They don't take expensive and lavish vacations or probably eat out very often. They walk everywhere and raise the food they eat. They lead very simple lives and lives that we can hardly imagine. But they seemed happy and were excited to see us and very friendly. There were lots of children out playing and they all came around to get a good look at us! 

Reemas did tell us that some of the younger children have never seen white people before and that they can be scared of them since our skin is so pale they think we are ghosts. We sort of laughed it off, but sure enough, there were a couple of little ones who ran off scared when they saw us. 

At the top of a small hill overlooking the little village was the local Hindu temple. Reemas asked if we wanted to go and see it and we said yes. I am absolutely fascinated by other religions and have been lucky enough to visit churches, cathedrals, mosques, temples, and a gurudwara, but I had yet to visit a Hindu temple. 

It was beautiful! The colors and detail are simply stunning! Reemas walked in first and asked if we could visit and they happily obliged. We slipped off our shoes and entered the temple.

We walked in and were surrounded in a riot of colors! 

The really awesome thing was that we visited a local temple-- not some tourist attraction with pamphlets detailing every nook and cranny, but an actual temple where people were praying and communing with their gods. It was an amazing experience and one of my favorite religious places I've visited. Do I wish I knew what I was looking at and the details of every nook and cranny? Absolutely. But the experience of walking through and seeing people pray and it not being some show-y thing is priceless.

The priest that was there gave us all blessings and anointed our heads with ash from the burning incense.

Reemas told us that a really cool thing about the area was that there came a point in the evening where every fifteen minutes a different religious noise sounded. The buddhist call, the muslim call to prayer, a christian church bell, and music from the Hindu temple. He said everyone lived in harmony and without strife. I thought that amazing and so awesome... and sure enough, we heard it all and it was beautiful!

We finished up at the temple and headed back to the bungalow. Heres a shot of the kids walking through the village. 

We got back to the bungalow after sunset and after a few minutes they called us into the dining room where our dinner was prepared. They had asked before what type of food we wanted and we said Sri Lankan food and Sri Lankan food they delivered! It was absolutely incredible!!! 

We had a fish curry, chicken curry, dhal (lentil) curry, string beans, pumpkin, fried rice, papadam, and the most incredible okra ever! Everything was full of flavor and incredible. And everything was local. Rice from Sri Lanka, chicken from the village, fish caught in the local lake, and all the vegetables were harvested from their organic garden. To say it was delicious is doing this meal a disservice. It was so much more than that. It was one of those meals I'll remember forever. 

We got to talk to the chef and tell him how much we loved the food and he offered to email us recipes. I gave them my email and my request for his okra and lentil recipe so hopefully I'll get that soon! 

The kids played hide and go seek and some other game they made up and the grown ups shared another pot of tea before bed. We crawled into bed and surrounded ourselves with mosquito netting, bellies and hearts full to bursting.