Brewed: Heritage, Happiness and Tea

How to make a tea factory metamorphose into a world-class hotel: Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka, can show us the way, says Sudipta Bhattacharjee 

There is a magical quality about Nuwara Eliya, a sleepy town in the heart of Sri Lanka at nearly 7,000 feet above sea level. With its swirling mists and lush tea plantations, gushing waterfalls and stately colonial cottages, the “city of light” and “city of the plateau” (roughly translated from Sinhalese) was better known as “Little England” in colonial times.

Founded by Samuel Baker, explorer of the Nile and discoverer of Lake Albert, in 1846, it nestles in the Pidurutalagala range, the tallest mountain on the emerald isle that forms a protective backdrop to this tea county in the Central province.

We drove from Colombo to the picturesque and touristy city of Kandy and proceeded to Nuwara Eliya the next morning. The 85km ride through hilly terrain, myriad hairpin bends (that would put the 36 Ooty-Masinagudi twists and turns to shame) and a tunnel took nearly three hours. A stop at a tea factory ensured sampling of the famous Serendip brew and a conducted tour of the premises. It left us impressed enough to buy golden tips (comprising only the tea buds) before feasting our senses on the gushing Ramboda waterfalls. How I wished tea gardens in India would orchestrate such a drive to popularize our teas.

Chuckling over the Mackwoods sign on the hill, styled in a takeoff from the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles (from across the Griffith Observatory), we passed unending miles of the Mackwoods Labookellie tea estate en route. There are other tea gardens en route, but none as sprawling as Macwoods. Indeed, the drive was a throwback to the tea-bush laden hills of Munnar in Kerala, albeit at a higher altitude (6,850 feet to Munnar's 5,200).

From Nuwara Eliya, we still had another 15km to our destination, the Heritance Tea Factory at Kandapola, most of it along a steep gradient. The old factory of the Hethersett plantation, now converted into this heritage hotel, is today a much-sought-after destination. Other than some wild buffaloes, we were fortunate not to encounter any descending vehicle on that narrow track and reached the verdant grounds with a song in our hearts.

Heritance Tea Factory

Set on a meticulously landscaped garden past manicured tea gardens was the Hethersett factory of yore (the first to fetch the highest price in the world for its silver tips tea), every single one of its 54 rooms booked by tourists from all over the globe. We were accorded a warm traditional welcome: Men in white headgear and sarong put a sandalwood paste tika on our foreheads and offered cardamom, cumin seeds and sugar candy to sample with their welcome drink of spiced tea.

Manager Roshanth Selvaraj accompanied us in an old iron elevator to the fourth floor that boasts of the Flowerdew suite, offering a breathtakingly beautiful view of the landscape. Only when we could tear away our glance from the view, did we notice the crystal bowl with luscious strawberries and a bowl of cream on the table!

 The original factory parts have been retained in green while the reinforcements are in red; the dining hall table décor is neatly blended with the red-and-green colour scheme (see pictures).

Tea factory dining room with old machine parts

The décor retains the carefully preserved vestiges of the old factory. There is a huge roller beam structure above the bar, formerly the factory’s tea packing room. The gadgets for drying green leaves are visible around the restaurant and lounge (the part of the factory where the tea leaves were rolled and dried).

Tea factory bar

The lofts of the factory are now the guest rooms. Outside the premises, an entire train bogey on tracks has been recreated into a fine-dining restaurant. A waiter even manages to use a lever to simulate the chug-chug rhythm of a moving train. In the absence of a platform, hauling oneself into the bogey from ground level is quite an adventure.

With the mist swirling over the pines, and lush green tea-covered hills as far as the eye could see, this destination was a sylvan dream.

But before leaving, just as the magical mist began to envelope the surroundings, I managed to get hold of a keepsake: the Heritance spiced tea recipe!

1 litre of hot water, 2 teaspoons of tea leaf, 2 cardamoms, 1 small piece of cinnamon, 1 sliced lime, 3 mint leaves, 2 teaspoons of vanilla essence, sugar (as per requirement). Boil for five minutes. Strain and serve!

 Editor's note: You may also like to see more Indian Chai Stories from Sri Lanka: -

https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/2018/03/anecdotes-of-maskeliyaupcot-district.html by Devaka Wickramasuriya

https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/search/label/Bernard%20VanCuylenberg - six tales - some spine-chilling, by Bernard Van Cuylenberg, and

https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/2019/01/sojourn-in-sri-lanka.html by Sarita Dasgupta

 

Meet the writer:

Sudipta is a career journalist who joined The Telegraph in Kolkata as a trainee in 1985 and retired at the end of August as Resident Editor (Northeast). She moved to Shillong in 1992 after her husband was transferred to Meghalaya on a three-year posting and continued to report for The Telegraph from there. She travelled to the United States on a Fulbright Research Fellowship in 2004-5 and returned to base thereafter. Her tryst with tea gardens began as a four-year-old to Kakajan in Upper Assam, where her uncle, Sukumar (Dhruba) Sengupta was posted. She and her family visited him in Majuli Tea Estate in Assam in 1970 and 1973 and by herself in December 1975 to the Dooars, when he was posted at Damdim Tea Estate. She has visited gardens in Darjeeling (where a tea tasting session was hosted for her), the Nilgiris and Munnar, Sri Lanka and hopes to share her experiences through this blog, of which she is an avid follower.

Sudipta is now adjunct professor of media science and journalism at Brainware University. 

 More stories by Sudipta here: https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/search/label/Sudipta%20Bhattacharjee

Is this your first visit here? Welcome to Indian Chai Stories!
Do you have a chai story of your own to share?  
Send it to me here, please : indianchaistories@gmail.com. 

My name is Gowri Mohanakrishnan and I'm a tea planter's wife. I started this blog because one of the things that I wouldn't want us to lose in a fast changing world is the tea story - a story always told with great seriousness, no matter how funny - always true (always), maybe a tall tale, long, or short, impossible, scary, funny or exciting but never dull. 
Happy reading! Cheers to the spirit of Indian Tea!