Our first visit of the day was to the Botanical gardens in Kandy,it had been a royal pleasure gardens but in the mid 19th cent the British developed it as a botanical gardens.Some wonderful orchids entranced us and we happily walked through the various avenues of mature palms and firs.We got waylaid by some local students in need of brushing up the language skills and were amazed by the fruit bat colonies that made a huge din as they roosted. We then drove to Pinnawela to see the orphan elephants being walked back from the river to their home and the poorly ones being walked down to the river for their wallowing.We visited the little factory across the road where they transform the elephant poo into paper.Next was the Millenium Elephant foundation who do free vet services for all elephants and have featured on TV and films. Here Kate was in heaven as she washed Pooja,the first elephant born in captivity when the foundation was set up,sat on her back and got drenched from water from her trunk.Kate rode the elephant up the river bank to where Sebastian could get on and we both rode her.It was surprising how bristly the elephants are.Kate was then able to give another elephant,Monica some fruit to really make her day(Kate's that is,not Monica's).
It was now time to drive up country into the tea growing area .Suddenly there were no more rice fields or coconut trees and the mountains now seemed to have a green carpet with occasional trees growing.These were the tea bushes and first silver cedars and then eucalyptus trees to give some shade for the pickers who are all women of Tamil origin who had been brought over from India by the British.Surprisingly tea has only been grown in Sri Lanka since the 1870's when the coffee grown before had become diseased and now they produce 13% of the world crop. We visited the Blue Field tea estate and had a tour of the factory.All the factories are virtually the same and actually look like museums with machinery dated over 100 years old but still going strong.The hillsides look like the Rhine valley vineyards with the names of the estates writ in large letters,it really didn't feel like the Sri Lanka we had experienced up until now. Our hotel tonight was the old planters club in Nuwara Eliya.It looked just like a Scottish baronial style mansion complete with animal heads,stuffed fish,a billiard and snooker room and 2 dining rooms,one formal and the other casual.We drank gin and tonics in the bar watching Scotland getting beaten by Sri Lanka at cricket and then had the set menu of a typical hotel back home.We even had a bottle of wine for the first time since leaving Mauritius,it just seemed so appropriate in a surreal way.It was if the Sun had never set on the empire.For breakfast we were promised porridge and bacon and eggs and it will be served on original crockery. When we retired to bed we found hot water bottles in the bed just to give us that "little England " experience for that is what this area is called even though we are 6000 ft above sea level.