Sri Lanka is a land of inheritances…. From its influences of the Portuguese, Dutch or the English that ruled the country and left an everlasting legacy behind from architecture, culture, commercial crops, clothing to even the way the rule of the land is the influence is unimaginable. Tea from Sri Lanka is word renowned. No tourist who visits this beautiful land will go back to their country, without experiencing a warm cup of tea, visiting a tea plantation or for that matter try their hand on plucking tea to gain the full understanding of the tea making process.
According to history as far back as 1824, it was the British who brought a tea plant from China and it was planted in the Royal Botanical Gardens in Peradeniya Kandy. However, the first commercial tea plantation was commenced in 1867 by a Scottish gentleman namely James Taylor at the Loolkandura Tea Estate when their coffee crops were plagued with a fungus disease.
The journey to this plantation will take a visitor approximately 2 hours from Kandy in a private vehicle. What is wonderful about going up there is that one has the opportunity to touch, feel, explore and experience the ruins of James Taylors house, the garden, the well and sit on his stone seat that allowed him to take in the grandeur of the Victoria reservoir across the valley, Hunnasgiriya, the Knuckles mountain range and the Hampshire of Matale. The fresh air one breaths here is so pure and clean that the solitude and the silence of being in harmony with nature takes us back in time to how James Taylor would have sat in this seat to plan, map and experiment with the commercial crop ‘Tea’ which he introduced to Sri Lanka. The old folks of the village say that when Mr. Taylor died, the villages had carried his body to the Mahaiyyawa cemetery in Kandy which is about 80 km away on foot reaching the cemetery at 4 in the evening on a journey begun at 8 in the morning from the estate. The gratitude and respect for him remains till todate and we were fortunate to talk to a Thalewar (supervisor of tea pluckers) who related stories as told by his grandfather. The Loolkandura Tea factory is still in operation though managed by the JEDB now. What began in 05 acres of land was developed up to 19 acres and today it’s a 450 acre of land that still fetches a very high price for the Tea produced from this estate.
Source: Zaharine Hameen (Aitken Spence Travels)
Sri Lanka Travel Feneteko