Words by Christopher P. Hill
Photographs by Christopher P. Hill
August 13, 2024

Amid the rolling green hills of the island’s tea country, an epic new walking trail can be experienced with a good dose of comfort.

On the Pekoe Trail outside Dickoya; trekking poles and sun hats at Nine Skies, a refurbished tea bungalow on a hilltop near Ella. — *Left to right:* On the Pekoe Trail outside Dickoya; trekking poles and sun hats at Nine Skies, a refurbished tea bungalow near Ella.

This is a story about tea. But in Sri Lanka, the story of tea begins with another beverage crop. Before swaths of Camellia sinensis bushes quilted the hills of the island’s central highlands, the forests here were dotted with coffee plantations. Early Dutch settlers were the first to try their hands at cultivating the bean, but it was the British who turned the colony they called Ceylon into one of the world’s biggest coffee producers; by the 1860s, they were exporting nearly 100 million pounds of the stuff each year. Then came an outbreak of leaf rust that wiped it all out. Most planters submitted to fate and returned to Britain; others followed the example of a doughty young Scotsman named James Taylor, who had established the island’s first commercial tea estate in 1867. They replanted their ruined coffee farms with tea bushes, which thrived in the misty uplands. By the turn of the century, estates with names plucked from the British Isles — Glassaugh, Blinkbonnie, Kenmare, Glenorchy — togther had more than 150,000 hectares of tea under cultivation. This was matched by an equally vast workforce of indentured Tamil laborers brought over from southern India to toil in the fields.

Today, visitors to Sri Lanka’s tea country are greeted by a landscape so picturesque they’d be forgiven for overlooking the more problematic aspects of its colonial origins. But there is perhaps one legacy of those days on which one can find safe footing: The Pekoe Trail, a long-distance walking route stitched together from the huge network of trails originally built for transporting tea leaves by bullock cart. Stretching for 300 kilometers between the lakeside city of Kandy (the last bastion of Sinhalese rule before the British completed their occupation of Sri Lanka in 1815) and Nuwara Eliya, the island’s highest town, it’s segmented into 22 stages that meander over tea trails, estate roads, village lanes, and forest paths.

“The Pekoe Trail puts Sri Lanka on the map as one of the world’s great hiking destinations,” Miguel Cunat, the sustainable-tourism consultant who designed the trail, tells me over breakfast at Fort Bazaar, a 17th-century spice merchant’s home turned boutique hotel inside the walls of the old Dutch fort of Galle, on Sri Lanka’s southwestern coast. A 20-year resident of the island, Cunat says he began researching the route a decade ago, inspired in part by the ancient Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in his home country of Spain.

“There was a lot of poring over maps and wrong turns and Indiana Jones experiences,” he recalls. “Thousands of kilometers of trails were built by engineers in the 19th century for moving tea between fields and factories. Our goal was to curate a route designed for ease and accessibility — the path of least resistance, if you would. I’m sure at least 10 kilometers of sheer exploration went into every kilometer of The Pekoe.”

Backed by funding from the European Union and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the trail officially launched last year. At its core, the initiative aims to tap into the ethos of slow travel while diversifying Sri Lanka’s tourism offerings beyond its beaches and well-trodden Cultural Triangle. Each stage of the trail averages about 14 kilometers, which can be explored as individual sections or as part of a multiday excursion. For those looking to design their own itinerary, a comprehensive website and navigation app list accredited local guides as well as dozens of hotels and guesthouses located near the various trailheads.

For my trip, I’ve elected to leave the logistics to Teardrop Hotels, a homegrown collection of intimate properties that includes Fort Bazaar and Wallawwa, a converted centuries-old manor house near Colombo. More to the point, the group operates a trio of tea bungalows in the heart of the island’s hill country, around which it has devised a seven-night, all-inclusive itinerary that combines time on the trail with gourmet meals and luxurious accommodation.

*Left to right:* A vintage tea chest; Dinesh De Silva, Teardrop Hotels’ resident naturalist.

*Left to right:* A tea planter at Dunkeld Estate; views across Castlereagh Reservoir from the main terrace at Camellia Hills.

My journey begins at Camellia Hills, some five hours’ drive inland from Colombo. Built in 2017 as a contemporary take on the classic Sri Lankan plantation bungalow, it lies at the end of a bumpy lane amid the tea gardens of a historic estate that fans out above the mirror-like waters of the Castlereagh Reservoir. With just five high-ceilinged bedrooms ensconced in tropical gardens designed by the late Sri Lankan artist Laki Senanayake, it’s a gorgeous setting. The reservoir, created in the 1960s, looks as natural and bucolic as any upcountry lake.

Teardrop’s resident naturalist, Dinesh De Silva, will accompany me on my walks throughout the week. The nearest section of The Pekoe Trail is stage 7, a 16-kilometer stretch that ends (or begins, depending on which direction you choose) at Norwood, a village at the eastern end of the reservoir. We opt to start halfway along in Dickoya — a 40-minute drive from Camellia Hills — where the cricket ground behind one of Sri Lanka’s oldest planters’ clubs is wreathed in morning mist. At this hour, 1,200 meters above sea level, the air is a cool 16°C, and the meadow grasses on either side of our muddy track glisten with dew. “You picked a beautiful day for a walk,” Dinesh beams. “Last week, it was rain, rain, rain.”

Soon enough, we’re rambling through a tea estate on a route dictated by the natural contours of the landscape. The sunlight slanting over a distant mountain ridge catches the top of a modest kovil (Hindu temple) on the hillside opposite us, and beyond that, the summit of a rocky pyramid far to the southwest. “Adam’s Peak,” Dinesh says, handing me his binoculars. “Our holiest mountain.”

Birdlife thrives in these highlands, and Dinesh, whose résumé includes a degree in zoology and a stint as a ranger at Yala National Park in Sri Lanka’s southeast, is quick to identify the various chirps and tweets and whistles that we hear. Yellow-billed babblers. Indian robins. Tailorbirds. Spotted doves. At the sound of a sharp yap, he stops and points down the path to where a family of barking deer, barely taller than the tea hedges, is warily monitoring our progress. A moment later, they vanish into the greenery.

*Left to right:* An African tulip flower; a “planter’s lunch” of Sri Lankan dishes at Nine Skies.

Interspersed with shade-giving silky oaks, gums, and the occasional African tulip tree laden with flamboyant reddish-orange flowers, the emerald sea of tea leaves ripples away in all directions. It’s a mesmerizing landscape, and I relish passing through it at a languid pace. That said, I harbor no illusions that the field workers, many of whom are descendants of the Tamil laborers brought over in the 19th century, are as enamored by the scenery. “Tea work is hard work,” Dinesh confirms, and poorly paid work at that: tea pickers must pluck at least 18 kilograms of leaves a day in order to earn 1,000 Sri Lankan rupees (about US$3.35).

Still, it’s all smiles and waves when we stroll through a ramshackle cluster of workers’ houses with faded pink and blue walls. Later, after fueling up with wade (spiced lentil fritters) and ginger tea at a roadside café in Norwood, we push deeper into the Bogawantalawa Valley. On hillsides studded with huge black boulders, women in headscarves hunch over the bushes, carefully picking only the youngest buds and leaves. Smoke rises from a fire of pruned branches. Down the road from the quaint planters’ church of St. Mary’s, another group of pluckers are having their morning haul weighed by the tallyman. The novelty of my presence evokes giggles. It’s a momentary respite before the ladies shuffle back to the fields.

My next three nights are divided between a pair of colonial-era tea planter’s bungalows that Teardrop Hotels has converted into handsome boutique properties: Nine Skies, about 100 kilometers east of Dickoya, near the backpackers’ town of Ella; and Goatfell, set high in the mountains around Nuwara Eliya. Both make it near impossible not to succumb to a certain vicarious nostalgia, with sitting rooms warmed by crackling fireplaces, crisply made four-poster beds, croquet lawns, gracious sarong-clad butlers, and that quaintest of British dining customs, afternoon tea. And like Camellia Hills, they both command expansive views from their respective hilltop perches.

The dining terrace at Nine Skies overlooks the bungalow’s lush gardens and swimming pool.

*Left to right:* A window at St. Mary’s Church in Bogawantalawa; the chimney of the Pedro Estate Tea Factory.

*Left to right:* The train station master at Demodara; a view of Ella Rock at dawn from Nine Skies.

In the case of Nine Skies, the view is of a broad, stupa-dotted valley that encloses the town of Demodara. Standing at the edge of the garden, you can also look down on a marvel of steam-age railway engineering: the Demodara Loop, a train track that circumvents a steep gradient by circling around the foot of a conical hill before passing under itself via a tunnel below the local station. According to Roshan, the cheery Teardrops driver assigned to me for the duration of the trip, the engineer responsible for the spiral design was inspired by the sight of a tea estate worker unfastening and retying his turban. Hats off to him, I suppose.

Nine Skies also happens to sit above one of The Pekoe Trail’s shortest but most popular stages, a winding eight-kilometer hike from Ella. To get to the trailhead, Dinesh and I head down to Demodara Station — itself an antiquated peach-washed gem dating to the 1920s — and board a southbound train for Ella. There, we leave the busy main road and enter a pine plantation, following a footpath that eventually emerges into a native forest of tree ferns and fishtail palms and cork-screwing vines. Green parrots chatter overhead.

One highlight of the morning’s walk is the Nine Arch Bridge, a curving, century-old railway viaduct suspended above a gorge on nine grand stone arches. This is one of Ella’s most popular photo-snapping spots, and there are already dozens of people on the tracks when we arrive. But not for long. At the blast of a horn, the crowd scurries off the bridge. The next moment, a blue-and-red locomotive bursts from a tunnel around the bend.

*Left to right:* A train crossing the Nine Arch Bridge near Ella; tea time at Camellia Hills.

*Left to right:* A leafy corner at Nine Skies; an antique letter box in the Nuwara Eliya Post Office.

Another highlight, entirely unscripted, transpires a couple hours later, when we pass a humble clay-brick house on the side of the trail back near Demodara. It’s home to a family of seven, and when I stop to take a photo of a lazing goat out front, the mother waves us inside. Dinesh explains that it’s the first day of Thai Pongal, a Tamil harvest festival; in keeping with the occasion, the woman has prepared a pot of pongal — a rice pudding cooked with milk and jaggery (raw palm sugar). She’s keen for me to have a taste. As her wide-eyed children look on, I pinch off a mouthful with my fingers. Not bad at all. To everyone’s delight, I ask for seconds.

As we say our goodbyes, I’m reminded of something Cunat told me back at Galle Fort. “The Pekoe Trail is as much about cultural experiences as it is about immersing yourself in nature,” he said. “It honors the very spirit of serendipity, a word derived from Sri Lanka’s ancient name Serendib: having a wonderful, spontaneous encounter with something or someone.”

That evening, I contemplate my serendipitous pongal and the hospitality of strangers over a considerably more substantial meal on the terrace at Nine Skies. As at Camellia Hills, the food — honey-glazed porkchops, pan-seared barramundi, splendid Sri Lankan curries — is hearty and delicious. After swapping stories of the day’s adventures with the English guests at a neighboring table, I linger over a whisky watching fireflies dance above the moonlit lawn.

*Left to right:* A tea factory near Goatfell; a bedroom at Nine Skies.

Cows are dyed and garlanded for the Thai Pongal celebrations; a snack of wade (lentil patties) and ginger tea at a café in Norwood. — *Left to right:* Cows are dyed and garlanded for the Thai Pongal celebrations; a snack of *wade* (lentil patties) and ginger tea at a café in Norwood.

Goatfell is the highest and perhaps coziest of the Teardrop bungalows. With its thick pebble-dash walls and bristling chimneys, the main house — rebuilt in the 1940s and stylishly revamped by Teardrop six years ago — sits on a sylvan rise at an elevation of 2,000 meters in the hills outside Nuwara Eliya. Beyond its copse of cypress and pine trees, the four-bedroom property opens onto a wide lawn and infinity-edged swimming pool where the views stretch east over the undulating highlands. At least, they do for a moment: shortly after my afternoon arrival, a thick blanket of mist envelops the vista in a radiant blankness. That night, the temperature outside dips to 10°C. When I return to my room after dinner, I’m thankful to find a hot water bottle tucked under the bed’s thick duvet.

The skies are clear the next morning when we set off through the surrounding Concordia Estate. Stage 21 of The Pekoe Trail runs between the towns of Uda Pussellawa and Kandapola, which lies down the zigzagging road from Goatfell. That’s 16 or so kilometers, only half of which we can manage before it’s time for me to check out. Even so, there is plenty to see. On the roadside of a neighboring estate, we encounter a group of grazing cows, their hides garlanded with flowers and daubed with purple dye in accordance with Thai Pongal traditions. In a stretch of montane forest, we stop to watch a troop of purple-faced leaf monkeys (an endemic species) swing through the canopy — though I pick up the pace when Dinesh informs me that leopards also roam these woods. And when the trees give way to tidy farm plots sprouting with leeks and beetroots, the views open up across the Uva Basin, a vast bowl of agricultural land framed by the mountain ridges of the eastern highlands. I can just make out the distant crest of Lipton’s Seat, where, over a century ago, Scottish tea baron Sir Thomas Lipton used to sit and contemplate his tea gardens.

While hikers can follow The Pekoe Trail in any direction they like, the route officially ends at the Pedro Estate Tea Factory on the outskirts of Nuwara Eliya. Roshan drops us off for a tour of the 1950s-era facility, whose popular Lovers Leap orange pekoe is named after a nearby waterfall associated with the star-crossed legend of a Sinhalese prince and his low-caste paramour. Our guide is nonchalant about such details. Inside, I can barely hear the rest of her presentation over the din of the dryers and crushers and packing machinery.

Farther up the road, the cluttered resort town of Nuwara Eliya was originally built as a highland retreat for British colonists in the 19th century. It won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but I find there’s an enduring charm in its relics of old Ceylon. The Tudor-style red-brick Post Office. The Scottish-baronial Hill Club. The rose gardens. The horse-racing track. And the Grand Hotel, established in 1891, where Dinesh and I end our time together on a sunny terrace sipping precious silver-tip white tea. The air is fresh, the sky a brilliant blue, and the tea, made from the tenderest of buds, imparts a delicate floral flavor that lingers on my palate. A fitting coda to my journey through Sri Lanka’s hill country, it’s the perfect cup.

*Left to right:* Tea gardens near Goatfell; a butler at the same property.

Teardrop Hotels’ “Highlights of The Pekoe Trail” package starts from US$4,350 based on two adults sharing a double room for two nights at Camellia Hills, two nights at Goatfell, and two nights at Nine Skies on an all-inclusive basis, as well as an additional night at Wallawwa, the group’s 18-bedroom country house hotel on the outskirts of Colombo. The price includes transfers by private car.

This article originally appeared in the June/July 2024 print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“Sri Lanka in Stride”).

On the Pekoe Trail in Sri Lanka