October 18, 2024 • 9 mins
"Savouring Sri Lanka’s Central Highlands is an adventure to relish. Swathed in lush jungle greens, pepper-potted with shapely hills and anchored by a gloriously soothing lake at its heart, the seduction is fast and sweet in the gateway city of Kandy. The very name Kandy conjures visions of splendour and mystique. It’s a city that proudly keeps its legends, traditions and folklore alive."
"Another huge highlight was visiting the storied Geragama Tea Factory. Located close to Kandy, this is one of your classic old-school tea factories, specialising in long leaf tea for over 120 years. They do a great job in chronicling the rise of Ceylon Tea and how the nation remains one of the world’s top five tea producers."
Read Mike's full article here.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That'd be.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Mike Hardley is our travel correspondent and is here today
to Mike Morning Jack.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Have a great time in the States. I reckon Carmela's
campaign is in a world of trouble.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah, I don't know about a world of trouble. I
think these things sort of eve and flow a little bit,
but I definitely think they're in trouble, you know, relative
to where they were a couple of weeks ago. This
is certainly a lag in the campaign that we wanted
to turn things around. If the election were held today,
I reckon Trump, I reckon Trump would have it. I
reckon Trump would have it. But I also just think,
(00:45):
like flip a coin, you know, flip a coin out
at the moment, what is it that makes you think
that her campaigns in trouble.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I've just got back from there, and I just think
a couple of things. First of all, the trend is
not who friend in the polls, you know when you
compare it to say twenty twenty or twenty sixteen and
those better ground states. But the other thing, Jack, and
it's one thing you picked up on with me a
few weeks ago. Was she just seems unable to give
a half decent answer to the tough questions. She just
(01:14):
continues to dodge those tough questions, And I just think
that raises huge question marks about, you know, the ability
of someone like that to be president.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Yeah. I tend to agree with that. I think she's
a really poor interviewee for someone who's made it to
that position, like a one on one interviewee. I'm not
I'm not saying that Donald Trump is a good interviewee.
The necessarily answers many questions, but yeah, I think she's
surprisingly weaken. It plays into the whole thing about you know,
like what does she actually stand for?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Right?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
It is hard to tell watching her. Yeah, it's gonna
be very interesting. So I'm looking forward to podcasting from
there over the next couple of weeks and trying to
get to give a sense of things, sense of things
on the ground. Yeah, thank you. So from the Mighty
us of A, we are turning our attention to the
Indian Ocean and the hill country in Sri Lanka this morning.
And the gateway city in the highlands of Sri Lanka
(02:05):
is Candy.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Right, indeed, I thought we'd do one last burst with
Sri Lanka and I headed for the hills. Jack. The
thing about Candy is it's just surrounded with all this
twisting topography. It's the sweetheart of a down candy. See
what I did there. The city has swathed in all
these lush jungle greens. You've got roly poly hells, and
this amazing man made lake, glorious, soothing lake right in
(02:29):
its heart. The thing about that lake is the prize
draw is right next to it, the gorgeous Temple of
the Tooth Relic. And I learnt a lot about this Toothjack.
So supposedly it is one of Buddha's teeth, taken from
his funeral pyre and smuggled into Sri Lanka seventeen hundred
years ago, hidden in the hair of a princess. No less, so,
(02:53):
if you're a Sri Lankan Buddhist, you have to take
a pilgrimage to this temple in your lifetime to enhance
your karmic energy. And the place was absolutely heaving with pilgrims.
It was quite a sight.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Wow, did you see the tooth?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
No, you can't see the tooth. It has locked away
in a golden casket right inside the shrine room. In
the shrine room, apparently it's whirled out about once every decade, right,
and then every year around the full moon in July,
they have this massive exuberant festival called Peta Hera, which
(03:31):
goes on for about ten days, full pageantry. They had
one hundred elaborately decorated elephants dripping with jewels on parade.
In the lead elephant mister Tusker. He carries a replica
of the tooth, so they don't even wheel out the
real tooth for the big festival. But I was getting
too a few local check and it's funny. Some people
(03:53):
reckon it's actually a buffalo tooth.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Oh really yeah, surely you'll be able to tell a difference.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Well, they think it's just not a human tooth. Those
that have seen it reckon that it's.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
No one's itching to go and to it like a
DNA testone or anything. I had to work it.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Out, yeah through yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
How amazing. So was the Central Market worth a bit
of a wonder?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Oh my goodness, it was so enthrawling. I ended up
talking cricket with these lovely old men who were wearing
away on the antique singer sewing machines in the tailor's section.
Then I went to the fresh fresh produce market, which
just radiates with abundance. I have never seen so many
banana varieties in my life, just so many different types
(04:41):
of bananas. And then in the meat and seafood section, Whell,
that was explicit and confronting, and I actually parked up
my protein preferences for several days after that counter I
became a temporary vegetarian. And you can't go wrong with
a dull curry or a jet fruit curry in Tri Lanka.
Although to be fair, Jet unlike India sdreaded Deli belly.
(05:03):
I had no stomach issues at all in tre Lunkan.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Great. Oh that's good. So when you say it was
a little bit eye opening, was it just like Dad
and Gore or is it so like you know, like
not Jack setting it was.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
The hyergiene question, Yeah it was. It was pretty bad. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Okay, yep, no, I get it. We don't need to
go into any more. What about the T factories? Can
you tour the T factories?
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah? This is such a cool thing to do. So
Candy's got a lot of the tea factories in Sri Lanka,
and I went to a place called Girigama te Factory.
It's one of your place of old school factories. They
have got machines near jack which like do the drying
and the processing of the tea, which had not changed
in one hundred years, the same machines. So when Victoria
was on the throne, these machines were operating amazing. Yeah,
(05:50):
but I was so fascinating to learn the whole sort
of backstory to the tea plantations in Sri Lanka. And
they are still one of the world's top five t exporters.
But the British who were responsible for fill On tea,
they Foost, actually tried to turn Salon as they called it,
into a coffee producing carehouse, but all the plants were
(06:13):
struck by a fungal disease, so that was a total disaster.
And then this guy James Taylor, he is like the
father of Slon tea. He thought let's give tea crek
and it's just transformed the nation.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yeah. Interesting, I presume that James Tayler is different to
the James Taylor the Muso. Yeah, so's the Hill Country landscape,
just like all tea plantations everywhere.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, it's really interesting. It's a total patchwork. So you've
got like high country jungle forests splashed with these gods
making waterfalls. I've never seen such enormous waterfalls before, and
then interspersing all that vast blankets of thickly stitched, undulating
emerald green tea plantations, and you just feel like you're
(07:00):
constantly switching from nature to nurture, nature nurture, and it's
such a stylealized landscape. Those tea estates. A lot of
the teepickers are tamils, so amongst all those grin plantations,
this blaze of colorful saris adding to the scenery. It
really is a visual symphony. And the best way to
(07:22):
do that, that sort of scenic experience is just jump
on a train from Candy and head up to the
higher reaches. It really is an incredible spectacle.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Nice. So how high did you go?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
I went up to a place called New Water, Alia
and it is about six and a half thousand feet high.
So what's that about? To two thousand meetings? Yeah, Mount Hope,
that mount it would be Mount Herts, Yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
The temperature change incredibly startling compared to the you know,
the steam heat down in the Lowlands. But you're all
(07:58):
those tea plantations up there in New Water, Alia. They're
all misst shrouded. The place is nicknames Little England, and
it's so weird jacket feel a bit discombobulating. There are
all of these quaint and jaunty reminders of British influence.
I was buying rock candy from Fox Tutor shops and
(08:18):
downtown New Wada area and at the local market, I
thought this said at all. I was most amused to
see these Tamil locals, clad and saris and wooly hats,
haggling over the price of OsO English vegetables like cabbage
tennants and passing it. That's the Sri Lankan Highlands and
(08:38):
one sweet, curious snapshot. I thought, that.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Sounds amazing, sounds like a very interesting place. You've totally
sold me on Sri Lanka over the last couple of weeks.
By the way, I'm really I've not been there. I
would love to go there, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I would love to go back. I just feel like
I've dabbled and it's just as a jewel of a country.
It really is so safe, beautiful people, great food if
you stick with the vegetarian and yeah, the scenery is
just gods me.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, oh, thank you so much for all of you
tips and advice, and we'll make sure that your latest
for the hill country in Sri Lanka is alongside your
other advice for touring through Sri Lanka as well, so
our listeners who want to go and experience that jewell
of a country and your words can do so.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Thank you, Mike, thank you, Jack, Safe Treble.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yeah, thank you so much. I'll be in touch and yeah,
over the next couple of weeks, see if anything on
the ground in my experience alters our perception of how
that race is going. November fifth, it's only a couple
of weeks away. Really, it's pretty yeah, getting getting to
the business end of things in the US.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News talks ' b from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That'd be.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Mike Hardley is our travel correspondent and is here today
to Mike Morning Jack.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Have a great time in the States. I reckon Carmela's
campaign is in a world of trouble.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah, I don't know about a world of trouble. I
think these things sort of eve and flow a little bit,
but I definitely think they're in trouble, you know, relative
to where they were a couple of weeks ago. This
is certainly a lag in the campaign that we wanted
to turn things around. If the election were held today,
I reckon Trump, I reckon Trump would have it. I
reckon Trump would have it. But I also just think,
(00:45):
like flip a coin, you know, flip a coin out
at the moment, what is it that makes you think
that her campaigns in trouble.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I've just got back from there, and I just think
a couple of things. First of all, the trend is
not who friend in the polls, you know when you
compare it to say twenty twenty or twenty sixteen and
those better ground states. But the other thing, Jack, and
it's one thing you picked up on with me a
few weeks ago. Was she just seems unable to give
a half decent answer to the tough questions. She just
(01:14):
continues to dodge those tough questions, And I just think
that raises huge question marks about, you know, the ability
of someone like that to be president.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Yeah. I tend to agree with that. I think she's
a really poor interviewee for someone who's made it to
that position, like a one on one interviewee. I'm not
I'm not saying that Donald Trump is a good interviewee.
The necessarily answers many questions, but yeah, I think she's
surprisingly weaken. It plays into the whole thing about you know,
like what does she actually stand for?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Right?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
It is hard to tell watching her. Yeah, it's gonna
be very interesting. So I'm looking forward to podcasting from
there over the next couple of weeks and trying to
get to give a sense of things, sense of things
on the ground. Yeah, thank you. So from the Mighty
us of A, we are turning our attention to the
Indian Ocean and the hill country in Sri Lanka this morning.
And the gateway city in the highlands of Sri Lanka
(02:05):
is Candy.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Right, indeed, I thought we'd do one last burst with
Sri Lanka and I headed for the hills. Jack. The
thing about Candy is it's just surrounded with all this
twisting topography. It's the sweetheart of a down candy. See
what I did there. The city has swathed in all
these lush jungle greens. You've got roly poly hells, and
this amazing man made lake, glorious, soothing lake right in
(02:29):
its heart. The thing about that lake is the prize
draw is right next to it, the gorgeous Temple of
the Tooth Relic. And I learnt a lot about this Toothjack.
So supposedly it is one of Buddha's teeth, taken from
his funeral pyre and smuggled into Sri Lanka seventeen hundred
years ago, hidden in the hair of a princess. No less, so,
(02:53):
if you're a Sri Lankan Buddhist, you have to take
a pilgrimage to this temple in your lifetime to enhance
your karmic energy. And the place was absolutely heaving with pilgrims.
It was quite a sight.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Wow, did you see the tooth?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
No, you can't see the tooth. It has locked away
in a golden casket right inside the shrine room. In
the shrine room, apparently it's whirled out about once every decade, right,
and then every year around the full moon in July,
they have this massive exuberant festival called Peta Hera, which
(03:31):
goes on for about ten days, full pageantry. They had
one hundred elaborately decorated elephants dripping with jewels on parade.
In the lead elephant mister Tusker. He carries a replica
of the tooth, so they don't even wheel out the
real tooth for the big festival. But I was getting
too a few local check and it's funny. Some people
(03:53):
reckon it's actually a buffalo tooth.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Oh really yeah, surely you'll be able to tell a difference.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Well, they think it's just not a human tooth. Those
that have seen it reckon that it's.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
No one's itching to go and to it like a
DNA testone or anything. I had to work it.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Out, yeah through yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
How amazing. So was the Central Market worth a bit
of a wonder?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Oh my goodness, it was so enthrawling. I ended up
talking cricket with these lovely old men who were wearing
away on the antique singer sewing machines in the tailor's section.
Then I went to the fresh fresh produce market, which
just radiates with abundance. I have never seen so many
banana varieties in my life, just so many different types
(04:41):
of bananas. And then in the meat and seafood section, Whell,
that was explicit and confronting, and I actually parked up
my protein preferences for several days after that counter I
became a temporary vegetarian. And you can't go wrong with
a dull curry or a jet fruit curry in Tri Lanka.
Although to be fair, Jet unlike India sdreaded Deli belly.
(05:03):
I had no stomach issues at all in tre Lunkan.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Great. Oh that's good. So when you say it was
a little bit eye opening, was it just like Dad
and Gore or is it so like you know, like
not Jack setting it was.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
The hyergiene question, Yeah it was. It was pretty bad. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Okay, yep, no, I get it. We don't need to
go into any more. What about the T factories? Can
you tour the T factories?
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah? This is such a cool thing to do. So
Candy's got a lot of the tea factories in Sri Lanka,
and I went to a place called Girigama te Factory.
It's one of your place of old school factories. They
have got machines near jack which like do the drying
and the processing of the tea, which had not changed
in one hundred years, the same machines. So when Victoria
was on the throne, these machines were operating amazing. Yeah,
(05:50):
but I was so fascinating to learn the whole sort
of backstory to the tea plantations in Sri Lanka. And
they are still one of the world's top five t exporters.
But the British who were responsible for fill On tea,
they Foost, actually tried to turn Salon as they called it,
into a coffee producing carehouse, but all the plants were
(06:13):
struck by a fungal disease, so that was a total disaster.
And then this guy James Taylor, he is like the
father of Slon tea. He thought let's give tea crek
and it's just transformed the nation.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yeah. Interesting, I presume that James Tayler is different to
the James Taylor the Muso. Yeah, so's the Hill Country landscape,
just like all tea plantations everywhere.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, it's really interesting. It's a total patchwork. So you've
got like high country jungle forests splashed with these gods
making waterfalls. I've never seen such enormous waterfalls before, and
then interspersing all that vast blankets of thickly stitched, undulating
emerald green tea plantations, and you just feel like you're
(07:00):
constantly switching from nature to nurture, nature nurture, and it's
such a stylealized landscape. Those tea estates. A lot of
the teepickers are tamils, so amongst all those grin plantations,
this blaze of colorful saris adding to the scenery. It
really is a visual symphony. And the best way to
(07:22):
do that, that sort of scenic experience is just jump
on a train from Candy and head up to the
higher reaches. It really is an incredible spectacle.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Nice. So how high did you go?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
I went up to a place called New Water, Alia
and it is about six and a half thousand feet high.
So what's that about? To two thousand meetings? Yeah, Mount Hope,
that mount it would be Mount Herts, Yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
The temperature change incredibly startling compared to the you know,
the steam heat down in the Lowlands. But you're all
(07:58):
those tea plantations up there in New Water, Alia. They're
all misst shrouded. The place is nicknames Little England, and
it's so weird jacket feel a bit discombobulating. There are
all of these quaint and jaunty reminders of British influence.
I was buying rock candy from Fox Tutor shops and
(08:18):
downtown New Wada area and at the local market, I
thought this said at all. I was most amused to
see these Tamil locals, clad and saris and wooly hats,
haggling over the price of OsO English vegetables like cabbage
tennants and passing it. That's the Sri Lankan Highlands and
(08:38):
one sweet, curious snapshot. I thought, that.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Sounds amazing, sounds like a very interesting place. You've totally
sold me on Sri Lanka over the last couple of weeks.
By the way, I'm really I've not been there. I
would love to go there, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I would love to go back. I just feel like
I've dabbled and it's just as a jewel of a country.
It really is so safe, beautiful people, great food if
you stick with the vegetarian and yeah, the scenery is
just gods me.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, oh, thank you so much for all of you
tips and advice, and we'll make sure that your latest
for the hill country in Sri Lanka is alongside your
other advice for touring through Sri Lanka as well, so
our listeners who want to go and experience that jewell
of a country and your words can do so.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Thank you, Mike, thank you, Jack, Safe Treble.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yeah, thank you so much. I'll be in touch and yeah,
over the next couple of weeks, see if anything on
the ground in my experience alters our perception of how
that race is going. November fifth, it's only a couple
of weeks away. Really, it's pretty yeah, getting getting to
the business end of things in the US.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News talks ' b from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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