Nuwara Eliya is the town where Sri Lanka's tea planters and colonial officials tried to recreate an English country town, and the result is delightfully peculiar. It sits at nearly nineteen hundred metres in the hill country, in a bowl of green slopes below the island's highest peak, Pidurutalagala, and the air is cool and often damp. The architecture is a mixture of Tudor-style cottages with roses in the gardens, a red-brick post office, a golf course, a racecourse and a gentlemen's club with trophy heads on the walls. It earned the nickname Little England, and the locals have never quite let it go. The town was established in the 1840s, when the explorer and administrator Samuel Baker set up a settlement here, and became the favourite summer retreat of the British who ran the island.
The real reason to come is tea. The hills around the town are covered in tea estates, with their neat green rows, picking women in bright clothes and old factories where the leaves are withered, rolled and dried. Many estates are open to visitors, with tours of the factory and a cup of fresh brew in a tea room with a view. The tea grown here, at high altitude, is delicate, light and fragrant, among the best in Sri Lanka. In April, during the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, the town fills with Sri Lankan holidaymakers, there are horse races and a fair, and prices rise sharply.
The ride up is spectacular. From Kandy or from the lowlands, the road climbs through a series of hairpins, past waterfalls and tea slopes with wide views over the valleys. The roads are narrow, winding and busy with buses, trucks and tuk-tuks, so progress can be slow. The surface is generally paved but patchy, and in the wet months, mist and rain reduce visibility. Drive on the left, as in Britain, and be aware that local driving habits are assertive. Foreign visitors need a Sri Lankan temporary licence to ride legally.
Nuwara Eliya has everything for travellers. There are petrol stations in town, restaurants serving everything from rice and curry to scones and cream, hotels of all kinds and a lake with paddle boats. Evenings can be cold, so pack a warm layer. In the morning, fog often hides the hills, and then lifts to reveal a brilliant green.
Talawakele, about fourteen kilometres away, is a small town on the way down toward Colombo and a convenient service stop. The best months to come are January to March, when the weather is dry and clear.