Kandy & the Hill Country

The hills were long a refuge rather than a centre. The early Sinhalese kingdoms ruled from the dry plains to the north, and Uva and the south-eastern lowlands of present-day Monaragala formed part of Ruhuna, the southern principality, whose Buddhist monuments survive at Maligawila and Buduruwagala. Kandy, known to Sinhalese as Senkadagala or simply Maha Nuwara, "the great city", emerged as the capital of an independent kingdom in the late 15th century.

As the Portuguese and then the Dutch took the coasts, Kandy held out behind its forests and passes for more than three centuries, defeating Portuguese armies and trading with the Dutch while resisting them. Its kings kept the Tooth Relic, the symbol of the right to rule, in a temple beside the palace. The last dynasty, of South Indian Nayak origin, lost the support of the Kandyan nobles, and in 1815 the chiefs signed the Kandyan Convention handing the kingdom to Britain. The Uva–Wellassa rebellion of 1817–18 was crushed with great brutality.

The British then remade the hills. Coffee was planted across them until a leaf disease that struck in 1869 ruined it, and tea replaced it. Hundreds of thousands of Tamil labourers were brought from South India to work the estates, and the railway climbed into the hills towards Nuwara Eliya and Badulla. After independence many of those workers' descendants were left stateless for decades. In 1998 an LTTE bomb damaged the Temple of the Tooth, which has since been restored.

Kandy is the capital of Kandyan Sinhalese identity, which keeps its own customs distinct from the low country: its own customary law, the Kandyan style of draping the sari known as the osariya, and its own dance tradition. Kandyan dancers, in beaded breastplates and elaborate headdresses, perform to the double-headed geta bera drum. The Esala Perahera, a ten-night procession of torch-bearers, drummers, dancers and caparisoned elephants carrying the relic casket, is the island's greatest festival.

The tea country has a different culture. The up-country Tamils, descendants of the estate workers, live in estate settlements with Hindu kovils, Tamil schools and festivals such as Thai Pongal and Deepavali, and speak Tamil among themselves; their community remains among the poorest in the country. Kandy also has a large Muslim population in towns such as Akurana, and in 2018 anti-Muslim riots around Digana led to a state of emergency.

Across the region, faith and landscape are bound together. Adam's Peak, Sri Pada, is sacred to Buddhists as the Buddha's footprint, to Hindus as Shiva's, and to Muslims and Christians as Adam's, and pilgrims of all four faiths climb it. Nuwara Eliya keeps its colonial rituals: the Hill Club, horse racing and the April flower shows.

Kandy is the region's city, a university and pilgrimage centre whose narrow valley suffers from heavy traffic. Peradeniya, just outside, is home to one of Sri Lanka's leading universities. Nuwara Eliya, Hatton, Bandarawela, Badulla and Monaragala are the other main towns.

Tea still dominates the economy. The estates of Nuwara Eliya, Dimbula around Hatton and Uva employ mainly Tamil workers, most of the pluckers women, who carry baskets on their heads and are paid by the kilogram; the level of the daily wage is a long-running political fight. Market gardening of carrots, leeks, cabbages and potatoes fills the terraces around Nuwara Eliya and Welimada. Tourism has transformed Ella from a village into a cluster of guesthouses and cafés, and Monaragala, in the dry lowlands, is paddy-farming country.

Mornings start cold and misty in the high towns, with pluckers heading to the fields early and buses grinding up the hairpins. The worries are the ones of the plantation economy — ageing estates, poor housing in the old "line rooms", young people leaving for Colombo — along with landslides that hit hill villages most years.

The food of the hills is plainer than on the coasts, built on rice and curry with vegetables grown locally. The up-country markets are the source of Sri Lanka's "English vegetables", and a Nuwara Eliya rice and curry may include beans, leeks and carrots cooked in coconut milk. On the estates, Tamil cooking brings roti, dhal and spicy sambar, and small shops sell vadai and thosai with milk tea.

Kandyan households keep the traditional festival sweets of the Sinhala New Year in April: kavum, oil cakes made with rice flour and treacle, kokis, crisp lattice-shaped fritters, and kiribath, rice cooked in coconut milk and cut into diamonds, eaten with lunu miris, a fiery onion and chilli relish.

Tea is the defining product. Nuwara Eliya's high-grown speciality teas find buyers around the world, and Dimbula and Uva are the other great tea districts of the hills. Many estates offer factory tours and tastings. Temperate fruit grown around Nuwara Eliya are sold at roadside stalls, and Ella's cafés have added banana pancakes and smoothies to the local repertoire.

Kandy centres on its lake and the Temple of the Tooth, the Sri Dalada Maligawa, part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Sacred City of Kandy, where drummers mark the daily offerings. The Royal Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya, with their avenue of royal palms and orchid house, lie on the edge of the city, and the Knuckles range rises to the north-east.

The train to Ella is an attraction in itself, climbing from Kandy past Hatton and Nanu Oya through tea estates and cloud forest, over the high pass near Pattipola and down through Haputale to Ella and the Nine Arches Bridge at Demodara. Nuwara Eliya has Gregory Lake, Victoria Park and the Hill Club, with Pidurutalagala, the island's highest mountain, above the town. Horton Plains National Park, a high plateau of grassland and cloud forest, leads to the escarpment of World's End and to Baker's Falls; together with the Peak Wilderness around Adam's Peak and the Knuckles, it forms the Central Highlands UNESCO World Heritage Site. Adam's Peak, about 2,240 metres high, is climbed by thousands of steps from Dalhousie during the pilgrimage season.

In Uva, Haputale sits on a ridge with views across the southern plains, close to Lipton's Seat, where Thomas Lipton surveyed his Dambatenne estate, and the Adisham bungalow. Ella has Little Adam's Peak, Ella Rock and Ravana Falls, and Badulla the Dunhinda Falls. In Monaragala, the standing Buddha of Maligawila and the rock-cut figures of Buduruwagala near Wellawaya are the main ancient sights.