Sri Lanka Holidays

Haputale, Central Highlands of Sri Lanka

Situated at 193 km from Colombo on the Colombo - Kandy - Nanu Oya (Close to Nuwara Eliya - Little England) - Badulla road & railway line sits Haputale at an elevation of 1579 m (4736 ft). This is one of the most spectacularly situated of all Sri Lankan towns. It is perched on a ridge top at the southern edge of the hill country with bird's eye views in both directions. To the south is the plains & coast. To the north is across the jagged lines of hills which recede into the distance towards the hill country. Arrival into the town by car, the sudden descent is startling. You would feel like the car is about airborne over the cliff: the sharp bend creates the optical illusion.

Haputale Gap
Haputale Gap is one of the most spectacular views in the country. The great amphitheatre of the upper Uva spreads out to the north and east. It is bounded by the mountains of Idalgashinna, Ohiya and the Horton Plains National Park, the peaks of Hakgala (Hakgala Botanical Gardens is located there), the purple cone of Namunukula, and Poonagala and Nuwara Eliya. On the other side is an equally breathtaking view & the foothills of the lower Uva, the southern Sabaragamuwa followed up Southern Province right down to the sea. On a bright and cloudless day, one could see the ocean as a bright blue line in the distance, disclosing the stabbing rays of the little lighthouse of Hambantota, far south.

A walk in the surrounding hills
As with Ella, the principal pleasure of a stay in Haputale is the chance to get out & walk in the surrounding hills-most notably up to (or down from) the magnificent viewpoint at Lipton's Seat. Specific sights around town include the tea factory at Dambatenne, the evocative old county mansion of Addhisham & the impressive Diyaluma Falls.

Haputale is a small town with a busy shopping street with a jumble of shops, cafes & a small fruit & vegetable market straggling along the approach to the train station. The town is surrounded by great walks to explore the area. As we walk down the main street from the Station Road crossing, again we witness the apparent disappearance of the road off the cliff.

Victorian heritage
Away from town, several tea plantations are happy to receive visitors. The principal memento of the Victorian heritage is St. Andrew's, neo-Gothic church with homely wooden interior which lies just north of the town centre along the main road to Bandarawela. The churchyard is full of the final resting places of nineteenth century tea planters, along with the grave of Reverend Walter Stanley Senior (1876-1938), author of the once-famous "Ode to Lanka", Victorian Ceylon's great contribution to world literature.

Lipton's Tea
East of Haputale, a scenic road leads 10km along the edge of the escarpment through beautiful tea estates to the rambling Dambatenna Tea Factory, built in 1890 by Sir Thomas Lipton, the tea magnate whose name lives on in Lipton's Tea. The long white factory building is one of the most impressive in the highlands & preserves some of its original colonial-era equipment, including a pair of huge old withering trays, demonstrating the extent to which the tea-making process (& often the actual machinery as well) has remained unchanged for a hundred years or more.

Beyond Dambatenne, a marvellous walk leads up to Lipton's Seat, one of the finest viewpoints in the country-the equal of The World's end. The road offers increasingly expansive views the higher you go, leading steeply up through a perfect landscape of immaculately manicured tea plantations with scarily a leaf out of place, connected by flights of stone steps & enclosed in fine old dry stone walls.

Lipton's Seat
It's quite a strenuous hike to the seat-about 7km by road, though you can avoid the lengthy hairpins made by the tarmac & so reduce the overall distance by taking short-cuts up the stone steps. Lipton's Seat itself-named after planter Sir Thomas Lipton, who often came here to admire the view-sits perched at the edge of a cliff, with enormous panoramas over the southern part of the island with green paddy fields, nestling amidst thick jungles, all the way to the coast on a clear day. As with The World's End, the viewpoint clouds over most days from about 10 am, so the early arrival is a must.

Greenfields Bio Plantations
Greenfields Bio Plantations, 3 km from Dambatenne, is one of the few organic tea producers in the country, where we can ask for a tour demonstrating the various processes involved. It's a very pleasant walk.

Dambatenne Tea Factory
The more traditional Dambatenne Tea Factory has the air of a philanthropic Victorian works, which indeed is what it is. Note the quote from Ruskin at the entrance, "Quality is no accident. It is the result of intelligent effort." Built in 1980 by Sir Thomas Lipton, the 20,000 sq ft factory employees 1,600 workers, 90% of which are resident, & accommodates over 4,000 people.

Benedictine monastery of Addisham
A few kilometres from Haputale in Colombo - Kandy road is Benedictine monastery of Addisham. The garden is home to blue magpies, paradise flycatchers, green barbets, brilliant orange plumaged mini-verts hornbills, golden orioles & a host of other bird life. The house that resembles Leeds Castle in Kent, England, was in fact built by a Kentish gentleman, who filled it with imported carpets, porcelain, furniture & glassware. He even had an English chauffeur for his Daimler. Today it is run as a monastery, which runs a domestic industry of food products such as jams & jellies from wild guavas & fruit cordials. The monastery borders the Tangamalai bird sanctuary.