Nuwara Eliya ( pronunced as Nooreliya) was the highlight for day 3 and I was really looking forward to it. Farida had mentioned that Nuwara Eliya has an amazing climate and stark contrast to the beachy south weather. We started out early from Kandy and I must say the drive was amazingly beautiful. I had to ask Yohan to stop at various places so that I could just enjoy the beautiful scenery around. But before that, I made a quick stop to the most famous temple in Sri Lanka, The Tooth Temple. Its a beautiful temple, serene and spritual. I was able to witness a pooja ceremony, the priest were playing various percussion instruments. I did think that it was attracting too many tourist and may be driving the locals who want to pray a bit crazy. There were guides with groups of foreigners, there were the single and odd couple moving with an audio guide. I decided not to go and see the the 'tooth" as it meant standing in a long que. So, took off for Nuwara Eliya early morning and by mid afternoon reached the lovely tea garden estates. Till as far as the eyes can see, all that there is too see are mounds and mounds of hills with tea shrubs. Local women picking the leaves, winding roads. It was just too amazing and I decided to stop at a teas estate for lunch. At the Blue Tea Estate I not only gobbled a very tasty lunch but had a quick 101 on how tea is prepared for consumption. There are various process, starting from Withering - where the tea leaves are kept in a trench for 12 hours and are dried with fans to remove almost 50% of the moisture. Next there is Rolling where the teas are rolled in this huge container for about 20 mins, that is then folowed by a Roll Breaker. At this stage the broken and crushed leaves get seperated in 3 sizes, and the big ones go back to the Rolling section. After this is the Fermentation process and no chemicals are added so that the natural flavour is retained. By the way the healthy Green Tea is not fermented at all. And another tidbit is that the strength of the tea depends on the temperature, teh period of fermentation and the humidity it retains. Now did you know that! After Fermentation, the tea goes into the Dryer Machine for about 21 minutes and firewood heat is used for the drying process. Finally, in Fibre Extraction , the dry leaves are put in this machine to seperate the different sizes. The branches are removed first and then the tea leaves. The small leaves are very strong and the big one are light. The last step is Grading, which further segregates the leaves further on thier size. Phew !!!
