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Sri Lanka is not only beautiful, it grows great tea! Being the tea-lover that I am, I was very happy to be drinking excellent tea every day, and even happier to get the chance to walk through tea plantations and tour a tea factory. Gordon drank a bit of tea, mostly because I forced him to, but he was more into the local coffee. As if coffee matters! Ha! Coffee, schmoffee. Did you know that Sri Lanka, back when it was Ceylon, used to grow lots and lots of coffee, with nary a tea bush in sight? Then the entire coffee crop succumbed to some sort of leaf blight, so the broke coffee plantation owners switched to tea. And thus my favourite drink became synonymous with Sri Lanka.
What? You think I'm obssessed with tea? Why on earth would you think that?

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Tamil tea-pickers on the plantation.

The Newburgh Estate factory and plantation.

Still bearing the name of the Scot who started it all. Nice thistle graphic!

Tea plantation puppy.

Natalie outside the Newburgh factory. It was sort of like visiting a holy shrine for me, the rabid tea-drinker. I am not worthy, I am not worthy! And yes, I know that red t-shirt is getting a lot of air time. I did bring other clothes with me, honest! In fact, I was so sweaty, I was changing three times a day. But for some reason, I kept getting photographed in the red shirt.

 

"Say Gordon, do you think we could fit one of those bags o' tea in my backpack?"

The factory was filled with vintage but lovingly-maintained machinery. It was fascinating to see how tea goes from fresh leaf to final product.

The plant manager guy (not sure of his exact title, but he was definitely in the management department) and one of the plant workers, who kindly took a break from washing down machinery to allow me to photograph him and his boss. The plant was not processing tea the day we visited, but the manager took a break and happily showed us around and explained everything. As I understand it, the management in the tea factories tends to be Sinhalese, while the workers tend to be Tamil. The women who pick the tea are also Tamil. And that's about the closest I am going to come to a political discussion at the moment! Draw your own conclusions.

Some tea at the end of its processing ordeal. I think this was "fannings", i.e. not the top quality broken-leaf tea. Basically,this stuff is the dust that goes into yer mass-produced teabags. There are several grades of tea and I found that I am a real fan of flowery brokery orange pekoe. Unfortunately, while we brought home a lot of tea, we didn't bring home enough to last a lifetime. I guess we'll just have to return to Sri Lanka for a visit!

The machine on the left was installed in 1938 and is still going strong. The machine on the right was installed in 1972. Visiting the factory was like stepping back in time! Most of the machines there have been there since the plant opened in the 1930's. The whole place is immaculate.

It's a... you'll never guess... yep, it's a TEA ELEVATOR!

Yeah, this might do me for a year. Maybe two.
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All photos and text copyright Natalie Rowe 2008 - Stealing brings bad karma. Don't make me set my lawyer-husband upon you!