Starting early
It was 4 am on a Tuesday in February when I woke up to the comforting sound of clinking from the kitchen. The darkness outside my window matched the total stillness of my bedroom as I listened to breakfast being prepared. This was Sri Lanka’s hill country, and early mornings must surely be the norm, I figured as I stretched my legs out of bed.
I was here to walk Section 13 of the Pekoe Trail, 300km of connected walking trails that weave through tea plantations. I would start at Haputale, a two-hour drive from here, and complete the trail 14.5 kilometres away at St. Catherine’s shrine.
Arriving in Haputale
My driver, informative and punctual throughout, was a tall, mild-mannered Sri Lankan with wavy hair and a cheery demeanour. In the two hours I sat in the car, I dozed in and out of sleep until sunrise, and the sky was bright enough to wake me fully. We’d arrived in a small town. Old buses cranked over potholes on a narrow, broken road lined with cars on both sides. We had climbed higher, a cliff tilted away steeply to one side.
“That’s Haputale train station down there, Miss,” the driver tells me in Sinhalese. I peer down through the window and see a makeshift gate and tin roof on the side of the cliff.
As we exchanged conversation, his phone rang. We were right on time, and my guide was waiting at the start of the trail. The driver navigated a crisscross of muddy lanes, barely wide enough to fit a car, and we spotted a tall young man waving. The driver stopped and jumped out, and I heard him ask for identification to confirm that he was indeed my guide.
“He has my contact details, Miss, and I will be waiting for you at the end of the trail,” the driver then reassures me through the window.
Glad to be out of the car, I stretched my legs, fixed my backpack and smiled at the guide. He had a kind face that looked far too serious for someone so remarkably young.
“You’re not the person I’ve been speaking to, right?” I ask in English.
“No, that’s who owns the business,” he replies. “I’m Irfhan, your guide because I know this trail well.”
“That’s good to hear,” I say in a half-hearted attempt to be funny. It’s lost on Irfhan who walks off, leading the way.
The start of Section 13 was, as expected, an entrance to a tea estate. At an elevation of nearly 1500 metres, the scenery was breathtaking. The cool mist of the morning hung like a delicate veil in front of the pale blue shadow of a mountain range in the distance. Our path led higher. Low tea bushes swirled around the slope like whipped green ice cream. Across the valleys, there was little sign of life one might expect from such beautiful country: grazing cattle, a house on a hillside or a village. These ancient, fertile mountains are largely uninhabited in favour of the profitable crops they afford. Sri Lanka’s liquid gold – Ceylon Tea.
Irfhan, it turned out, is a person of few words, speaking only to point out a loose stone or a slippery footing. As someone who equates meaningful conversation with intimacy, I was grateful to have a guide who matched my energy. In a different situation, I would have been irritated at having the guide I’d expected being changed without notice. I might have even pulled out of the hike altogether. But after a decade of travelling, much of it alone, I trust that only the right people spin into my orbit. And Irfhan turned out to be one of the best.
Leopard country and surviving leeches
We walked for close to an hour, and the scenery had changed little. In some places, where there was no trail, we pushed wild, overgrown hedges away and climbed almost vertically. It had rained heavily overnight. In a few places on this higher ground, the soil was wet clay, which felt treacherous. My overwhelming concern, however, was not falling to my death but leeches.
“Do you think there are leeches around because of the rain?” I asked.
“There shouldn’t be,” answered Irfhan.
“How about snakes?”
“No snakes in the highlands. It’s not the right climate.” That was the right answer.
“How about leopards?”
“Not that often,” said Irfhan.
“Never,” was the reply I’d hoped for, but I had hedged my bets by choosing to walk big cat territory as if I were walking across Richmond Park on a Sunday afternoon.
“Did you bring anything for the leeches,” I asked.
Irfhan stopped to reach into his backpack and handed me a bright pink soap wrapped in wax paper.
“There shouldn’t be any leeches, but if you’re worried, put your trousers into your socks and rub the soap on your shoes.”
I covered my shoes and socks in pink wax. With the threat of leeches taken care of I only had predators that ambushed their prey to look out for.
Irfhan sometimes stops to show me flowers or an endemic plant. This section of the trail, fairly easy to hike, was monotonous. The lack of sound was not peaceful, but it felt eerie until I saw the first sign of human life: an empty hut. It was open on all sides with a flat thatched roof. I gasped in relief at the sight of it. The morning mist had lifted quickly, making way for burning sunlight to hit the ground like arrows. This tiny hut was the first shelter we’d seen since setting off at 7 am.
“Is this hut used for resting while picking tea?” I asked Irfhan, who looked perplexed by my question.
“It’s where they bring leaves to be weighed,” he answered.
“Ah, I see. That’s why there are no seats,” I say, convinced that Irfhan must now be gobsmacked by my entitled, first-world perspective of life.
“We should keep moving,” Irfhan says in his unhurried way. And so we kept climbing, me stopping for sips of water every few minutes and Irfhan walking ahead without breaking a sweat. In the distance, there was little to break the scenery. I’d become accustomed to the immense silence around me, the bright sky, the blue mountains and the green of low shrubs. Occasionally, a twig cracked or soft red mud squelched under the weight of our feet. Other than that, we continued climbing higher, and we had not seen anyone else for nearly two hours.
First encounter - the lives behind the tea plantations
Soon, we reached a clearing. Two women with hessian sacks full of tea leaves hanging from their heads, their skin darkened by the sun and backs hunched by the weight of their bags, barely looked up as they crossed our path. They were escorted by two men. One wore a blue short-sleeved shirt tucked into grey shorts, which sat high above his knees. The buckle on his belt glistened in the sunlight as if it had just been polished. He wore a black cap that fitted tightly on his head, and two pens peeked out of the pocket of his shirt. By all accounts, his attire elevated his status from that of everyone else. Both women wore long-sleeved shirts over floral patterned skirts which reached down to the ankles. It was then that I noticed they were both barefoot. They walked purposefully as if they had somewhere to be.
I was glad to see people and greeted them in the hope they’d stop. But they kept walking. I asked Irfhan to call out to them and ask if they would agree to a picture. I had stopped taking notes about an hour ago, and a picture would come in handy to jog my memory when I started writing.
Irfhan spoke to the group in Tamil. Before he could finish speaking, one woman threw her hands in the air in exasperation. Incessant picture-taking, even in social situations, grated on me, and I recognised the frustration instantly. It’s how I’d feel if a stranger asked for a picture while I was working.
Humble, happy, and smiling are words repeatedly used to caption images of tea pickers in Sri Lanka. Because, in this beautiful and exhilarating landscape under a cloudless blue sky, verdant greenery, and bright sunshine, surely no sense of unease is possible?
Yet, this stranger, aged beyond her years, conveyed it in a single interaction. She did not want her picture taken. I had expected her to oblige like the smiling women on tea estates shared on social media. Now, the feeling that perhaps some of the smiling women may not have wanted to have their picture taken hit me. But it was done anyway, to force a narrative of humility that we alone willed.
I asked Irfhan to reassure her that she did not need to be in the picture, and I certainly had no intention of sharing the picture with anyone. I only wanted to remember meeting them. It was then that they all obliged. Irfhan spoke in Tamil with the group, and their familiarity with one another made me think that perhaps Irfhan belonged to this community. That could explain his familiarity with the trail. He knew every stone, ledge and tree and guided me with the expertise of someone who knew the landscape intimately. However, a little later, when Irfhan felt comfortable, he shared that he was 30 years old and lived in a small town nearby with his wife and young son. He has been hiking these mountains for 12 years and knows the terrain very well.
This community, whose lives are confined to the estates, is deeply romanticised in pictures and unimaginably oppressed in life. Their history is largely unrecorded. During the British colonial period (1815 – 1948), the British, needing a large workforce to work on the tea estates, recruited low-caste, mainly Tamil-speaking communities from India, tempting them with the promise of a new life in Sri Lanka. Desperate to escape famine, caste-based discrimination and poverty, they paid exploitative fees to leave their home in search of a better future. They could not have imagined that 160 years later, they would still be living in single-room homes without water, sanitation or medical facilities, cut off from the rest of the world.
At the Altar of Lord Shiva
After this unexpected encounter, there was more evidence of life along the trail. We walked past a Lingam (an oval-shaped rock) set on a wider, flat stone. A tasselled gold and green scarf was wrapped around it, symbolising the generative power representing God Shiva in Hinduism. Fresh white jasmine had been placed over the scarf, and more flowers were placed around it.
“Who’s done that?” I asked Irfhan as we walked past the stone.
“People do that before they start work to have a good day of picking tea,” he replied.
We were now at eye level with the peaks in the distance. Soon, I spotted another hut similar to the first. Wooden planks, acting as a roof, were supported by slender trunks of eucalyptus trees. Chopped tree trunks weighted down the planks on the roof. The ground around it was strewn with purple petals of bougainvillea flowers, which blew around in the wind. Jagged, stone steps lead to the hut. From this height, the deep valley below opened out in a green wave from east to west. A road cut through the middle like a ribbon hand-stitched onto the landscape. A small lake, tucked between the road and a forest, glistened to the right. To the left, clusters of tiny houses peeped out of the scenery.
“We can rest here,” Irfhan informed me.
I was relieved to hear those words. The sun had become impossibly hot, and there was little respite from it. The hut, built under a giant tree, was cool and felt peaceful.
I perched on the ledge and removed my boots to find the bright white of my socks stained orange from the runny clay that had got into my boots. As I glanced around the valley, I noticed the silence had disappeared. I could hear what had been missing all along: the sound of birds, crickets and the whisper of leaves in the wind. A whistling thrush landed on a branch overhead and chirped to another. Soon, a whole chorus of birdsong filled the air. Just then, the thunderous sound of a hiccup made me jump out of my skin.
“What is that?” I asked, jolting to my feet, alarmed.
“It’s a frog,” came the answer from Irfhan, sitting several feet away from me.
“Where is it?!”
“In the water behind you,” he answered calmly.
In admiring the view in front of me, I had failed to notice that we hadn’t arrived at a hut but what appeared to be an altar. Behind me, at the foot of the big tree, was a cement altar. On it sat a Lingam, protected under an arched recess, adorned with several gold scarves and multiple garlands of bright red and orange flowers over it.
“Oh! I didn’t see that behind me. Is it ok to sit here?” I asked Irfhan.
“Yes, it’s ok, but if you want to go up to it, you can leave your shoes off,” he answered.
I walked up to the altar for a closer look and noticed that two eyes were chalked on to the Lingam. I looked into the pond to find the frog but couldn’t see it. There were three empty bottles of Arrack, the local tipple, next to the pond.
“People come here to drink?” I was surprised.
Irfhan, now clearly accustomed to my ignorance, replied calmly:
“No, they probably brought some water in the bottles.”
“What for?”
“To cook,” he replied.
I was not prepared for this.
“Why would anyone cook all the way up here? Do you mean like a picnic?” My ignorance was a bottomless pit.
“No, they sacrifice animals here,” said Irfhan.
This was an answer that I could not have predicted in a million years. I did everything to appear unsurprised so as not to offend, but I was certainly pressing on for more. Irfhan pointed at a flat round stone in front of the altar and explained that sometimes live animals, such as chickens or goats, were sacrificed on the stone. The animal would then be cleaned and prepared as food and offered to God Shiva. Everyone else shared the food that was left.
Other times, the animal might be sacrificed elsewhere and brought here to be cooked and offered to Lord Shiva. Stunned by this revelation, I looked around the stone, unsure what I was looking for. Among the dead leaves and petals strewn across the floor was a coconut shell, a utensil in Sri Lankan kitchens.
“So, why would they do that?” I asked Irfhan.
“For so many reasons. Maybe to get rid of bad luck. Maybe someone is sick, and they want them to get better. Maybe they want something to work out. So many reasons,” he replied.
Suddenly, my abysmal insensitivity and ignorance came into sharp focus. I had wanted to hike through beautiful scenery, take pictures, and tell everyone about it. It would be easy: the tea, the slopes and the gentle passes as seen in a thousand glossy images. That’s what I had come for. But now, to look at the people who lived, worked and died on the mountains of this primitive world I had entered, where little had changed in over a century, was much harder. I was trespassing on deeply personal and vulnerable moments of their lives. Moments not intended to be seen by anyone; hopes, prayers and dreams tied up in tattered ribbons waiting for a miracle. I was moved to tears by the simplicity of it. I pushed my feet back into the muddy boots and asked Irfhan to lead the way.
No photos, just reality
We arrived at a road. It was wide enough for a small car and ran through a tea estate with a low rock wall to the left of it. To the right, the land sloped toward a deep green valley with tea bushes clinging to the side like moss. I looked up at the crystal clear sky and followed the sunlight, which fell on a flock of houses tucked into the land further down the valley. Human voices echoed faintly in the air, but they had a high tone of calling rather than conversation.
A woman wearing a bright purple headcover was picking tea nearby, and another was doing the same further away with a look of melancholy spread across both their faces; they were as solitary as anyone could be. On the side of the road, a younger woman in a faded blue saree tucked around her waist was squatting in front of a large cauldron on an open fire. The smoke from the fire billowed around it as she stoked it. The woman wiped her forehead with the back of her arm and looked up at me, startled. She was uncomfortable or embarrassed or both and averted her eyes quickly. It was clear that she did not wish to speak with anyone.
Once we got past her, I asked Irfhan what she was doing.
“She’s boiling water to drink,” he replied.
“I see,” I replied.
It had not occurred to me that there would be no running water in the middle of a vast tea estate. Women carry their own in big plastic buckets and boil them before drinking, a common practice when lack of sanitation can contaminate rivers and streams.
We continued walking in silence for a little longer until I noticed purple flowers against the green of the tea bushes.
“I didn’t know tea trees had flowers,” I exclaimed.
“They don’t,” replied Irfhan. “Those are weeds, they strangle the tea plant if they’re not removed.”
“So, who removes them?” I asked.
“The women do,” he responds.
“Which women?”
“The ones that pick the tea.”
“You mean that they pick tea and clear weeds at the same time? They do two different jobs?”
“Yes, they have long knives with them, which they use to clear the weeds while they pick the leaves,”.
“I see,” was the only response I could muster.
In 2021, when Sri Lanka’s tea yields fell to a 26-year low due to the government banning fertiliser, workers on the estates struggled to meet the daily quota of 18kg needed to earn £2.60. This meant they earnt less per kilogram of tea picked. The subsequent economic crisis caused real-term wages in the sector to fall to £2.20, and an 86% rate of inflation drove the price of goods beyond the means of most people. During this time, the UN World Food Programme estimated that 44% of families on tea estates suffered food insecurity, and most families skipped meals.
“It’s a deer, not a dog. It’s a barking deer”
We continued our climb uphill northeastwards. The landscape became distinctly different: the ground drier and the air hotter. The lush green of tender tea leaves disappeared. The leafless brown twigs of tea bushes that surrounded us had the appearance of a vineyard after harvesting. We were walking through clear and broader paths. The odd eucalyptus tree broke the line of the mountainside. Irfhan pointed to a tiny lizard with a sharp tail, perfectly camouflaged against the stones on the ground. I watched it dart across and scurry away under a dead tea bush.
Then, the sound of a dog barking startled me and I noticed that it leapt out from the dried husks of tea bushes before disappearing.
“Oh my, who’s dog is that, I wonder?” I said to Irfhan.
“It’s a deer, not a dog. It’s a barking deer,” he replied.
My overriding concern at this moment was that deer only run to escape predators.
After a short while, the ground remained flat, but the dense greenery reappeared. Eucalyptus trees reached high into the sky on both sides of the path, and low rock walls lined the way. We stopped by a date stone embedded into the ground with 1939 carved on it. We had reached an elevation of just 1880 meters in over two hours. The sound of birds chirping returned, and we were nearly at the highest point of the hike marked by an antithesis – a pylon.
The ascent was a series of boulders without any path at all. We climbed over and emerged in a forest. Bright yellow flowers grew between rocks and added a welcome sense of warmth and softness to the surroundings. Tall stemmed flowers peeked out of the forest floor, pink moss climbed the side of boulders, and, in places, blades of lemongrass reached above my head. From here, the climb downhill to St. Catherine’s was through a road across a fairly flat tea estate. We had arrived at the end of the trail, where a bright red tuk-tuk waited to carry me back.
The definition of community
The Pekoe Trail was envisioned by Miguel Cunat, a Spanish expat who moved to Sri Lanka 22 years ago. Cunat’s family pioneered winter sports in Spain and are, in his own words, “mountain people.” As he explored Sri Lanka, Cunat was surprised to find the maze of trails that cut through tea estates across the mountains and valleys of the central highlands. He began documenting his favourite hikes and strung them together into a continuous long-distance hiking trail that would later become the Pekoe Trail. The development of the trail was funded by the European Union with additional support from USAID.
“The Pekoe Trail is a non-profit, and we have incorporated 60 businesses into it,” Cunat explained when we spoke at a later date. “Furthermore, we are developing a training programme that will see 100 official guides and also an emergency response team. The community is always growing,” he added.
Currently, this community consists of businesses registered with the Sri Lanka Tourist Board, owners of tea estates, and trail users. They make up a Facebook group of 11,000, mostly Sri Lankan members who take pride in the trail and enjoy the benefits of hiking in nature. They are the least affected by it and stand to gain from the success of the Pekoe Trail.
The most affected, however, are those who have been living and working on tea estates for 160 years, whose private, personal moments are now laid bare for the world. Despite a community outreach informing them that the trail will run through their villages and could bring economic advantages, they stand to gain the least and will wait much longer for any benefits of this endeavour to reach the low echelons of their existence.
“I think this is a slow-burn, gradual build project. We are unlikely to see tangible outcomes early on. The people in the towns will benefit, but they are not the tea pickers. We are currently in talks with the Pekoe Trail about employment avenues for our alumni and other community members,” says Tim Pare of the Tea Leaf Trust, a charity that runs educational programmes for children and young people growing up on tea estates.
A final connection
As I removed my bag to climb into the tuk-tuk, I noticed a woman picking tea waving me over. Completely surprised, I climbed up on a ledge and walked up to meet her. Irfhan followed. Her glassy eyes stared at me with curiosity as I offered my hand to her. She stroked my hand with both of hers and then called another woman to come over.
They stood side by side, and we got talking with Irfhan acting as interpreter. Maadhavi had light eyes, and I could see that her bare feet were scarred and the nail beds lifted away from her skin. She was 47 years old and wore a black apron over her saree. A knife, with its handle wrapped in fabric, was tucked into her waist. A large sheet on her back, tied around her head, collected the leaves she picked. Her lips and teeth were stained red from chewing betel leaves.
“I came here from another tea estate when I got married. I was 18 years old at the time,” said Maadhavi. She had spent her entire life picking tea.
Maanasi, with curly hair around her face like a halo, was 42 years old, wore a pink jacket over her saree, and protected her head with a black scarf. A basket hung from her head. Her lips, too, were red, and I could see her stained teeth as she spoke.
“I worked in Colombo as a domestic maid before I came here. I got married when I was 18 years old, too. So, I got a job on this estate after that,” added Maanasi.
Maadhavi and Maanasi were curious about who I was and what I was doing here. They asked for a picture of the three of us together. I happily obliged and took down Maadhavi’s address to post a printed copy. It was clear that I was a novelty to both of them. I had to convey to them the ridiculous notion that I was walking through tea estates and doing for pleasure what they had to do to survive.
The heart of St. Catherine
We came down from the mountain around noon. A muddy path wound tightly downhill, with a steep drop to one side. The driver of the tuk-tuk, on his phone the entire time, controlled it with just one hand. Villages were scarce in these mountains, but we passed a spread of tiny houses. Sheets of tin weighed down with rocks, formed their roofs. Walls were painted bright pink, green and blue. Washing lay on a flat roof, drying under the sun. Beds of vegetables surrounded each little house. Yet, there was not a soul to be seen.
Further down the mountain, we passed groups of children returning home from school, dressed in pristine white from head to toe. We also passed line rooms, homes only slightly bigger than a toll booth on a highway. The tuk-tuk stopped opposite a large tea factory where a half-built kovil and a nursery sat opposite. We had arrived at the heart of the community. My driver was waiting for me and held open the car door.
I got into the car that would drive me away from this world I had envisaged so differently from the one I experienced. We drove past a row of four tuk-tuks lined up on the side, waiting to pass. Each was filled with tourists beaming out of both sides; cameras pointed at anyone who walked by. As they were not dressed for hiking, it was hard to imagine where they could be headed. If you’re not hiking, there’s little to see other than a voyeuristic insight into the lives of people who call these vast estates their home, a community that is ill-prepared to bear the brunt of mass tourism.
If you are passionate about hiking in the wild nature, check out our Naturalist Journeys page to discover other exciting destinations.
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Demi Perera
Demi is a London-based travel writer with nearly a decade of experience. She is a co-author of Lonely Planet’s Experience London guide and has just finished working on Lonely Planet Sri Lanka country guide. Demi also has bylines in CNN, BBC Travel, Citizen Femme and a host of other leading publications.