Ella - behind the scenes of Ceylon tea

We made it to Ella! What we expected: Lush hills with tea plants, cooler weather and a nice little town. What we got - by far the most touristic place of Sri Lanka so far. Its flooded by german and french people at the moment. Luckily however this fact does not take away the beauty of the surroundings. On our first full day (we arrived the day before in the afternoon and just had some Dinner and Drinks) we decided to Go to Lipton’s Seat First. Its usually a very nice spot where you can overlook the whole tea plantation with Green fields. Lipton (some of you might know him from the Lipton tea) was a scottish Business man who wanted to expend the tea industry in Great Britain, knowing that there would be a much higher demand for it in the Future. To this day black teas from this area are called english breakfast and afternoon breakfast teas.
Once we arrived at Lipton‘s Seat we expected a beautiful view (Apparently there is a sign saying its one of the nicest in the world) but we could only see fog - lots and lots of fog.. nothing else..
Luckily we spoke to some Tuk Tuk drivers and they said we have to wait around 20-30 minutes for it to clear up. I did not really believe them. But since we were in the tea region anyways and it took a long way to get there with the train we eventually had some black tea with samosas and waited.
After around 20 minutes - can you believe - we really got to see the view!! And it was really amazing! :) we got soo Lucky! Once we made our way down again and towards a tea factory we then saw that the fog got more and more again. So we actually were able to be on top for a small open window :)
The tea factory was also really interesting! Build in 1890 from Lipton it still runs to this day by the people of Sri Lanka! Planting, harvesting and preparing tea is however hard work.
Can you believe that one tea worker a day only earns 1000 rupis (about 3€) a day for harvesting 20 kg of tea? Crazy!
The tea factory tour started by a tea tasting which I really liked. We were able to try white tea, english breakfast, afternoon breakfast and a even stronger tea. Thats literally how they called it :D I liked all of them.
Harvesting tea and preparing the tea is a multistep process (unfortunately you were not able to take pictures inside the factory):
1. You First Start by harvesting all the Young and fresh leaves on top or the Plants
2. dry them for 14 Hours during dry Season and 18 hours during wet Season
3. then you roll the leaves in a machine
4. the leaves are then cut and sifted 4 times
5. fermented for 2,5 h
6. dried for 20 minutes at 130 degrees
7. then collected and differentiated into smaller, larger and really large pieces (the different sizes make the strongness and quality of the tea)
8. packaged at 60 kg and finally autioned in Colombo
It was very interesting to see especially with all the workers walking barefoot.
After the tea factory we asked a tuk tuk driver for a very authentic place to eat and it was definitely authentic. A little place hidden, but with very nice curry and rice. Lorenzo can still feel the heat of the Curry ;)
We then headed to back to Ella. Initially we wanted to also do Ella rock, but because the train was so delayed and it was raining we Skipped Ella rock and just went home.
I really hope we will have another open window do get to see more.Read more