Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka and Jetwings St.Andrews Hotel – Travel Review
By Kevin Pilley, May 2025
“This will make you active and lusty!” I took a tiny sip from my bone china cup. I didn’t like the thought of being active and lusty in 90-degree heat. Sri Lanka teaches you to tell your “Uda Pussellawa” from your “Uva”. My guru smacked his lips appreciatively. An almost Buddhist-like calm suffused his face. He swooned as he swilled, blissfully savouring the antioxidants.
“The loose leaf produces an excellent rounded intenseness. Dimbulla takes milk well – and is perfectly balanced to be quaffed all day,” he observed sagely. “But to be truly ecstatic it must be brewed at exactly 80 degrees Celsius and not be allowed to stand for more than two minutes four seconds. Of course, I am also a great fan of Green Kandyan Blooms.”
He looked at his dry-mouthed acolyte in a very learned “But who isn’t?” way. “It is made from one bud and one leaf only. Plucked in the early hours of morning at high elevation – it is the Rolls-Royce of Ceylon teas.”
He drank from another cup and smiled serenely. “Unmistakably Kandy FBOP. A good red colour and lingering malty taste. But my preference with scones is the classic black wiry Ruhuna.”
Tea is thought to have been discovered by the Chinese emperor Sheng Nung 5,000 years ago when some leaves fell into a cup of water. It began as a medicine and grew into a social beverage. Sri Lanka now produces over 280 million kilos of tea every year from six tea districts. The industry employs 30,000 workers. Harvested all year, Sri Lankan tea is exported to over fifty countries.
Blue tea factory
“Senses overload”
The best place to taste tea – and get a taste of Sri Lanka – is up in the tea fields of Nuwara Eliya, a four-hour drive from the capital, Colombo. En route, you see white-shirted schoolchildren, ladies under parasols and roadside orange coconut stalls. You pass waterfalls like St Clair and Devon, the elephant orphanage and bathing site at Pinnawala, and the Kelani Ganga river – where Sir David Lean filmed The Bridge Over the River Kwai. You see arrack toddy collectors shinning up coconut trees. You are watched by toque monkeys and brown-capped babblers. You cross rivers and see river monitors and enormous black bats hanging from trees. You smell wild tobacco and Princess of the Night flowers. You drive under conical bunya-bunya trees. Your senses overload.
Then you climb 6,000 feet above sea level, upcountry into the tea plantations where the pluckers work the steep terraces, picking the top two leaves of every bush – and are on £2 a day. You learn from your driver that the shrubs are picked every 20 days, dried for a fortnight, and then rolled.
Suddenly you arrive at the Mansion of the Mist – Jetwing St Andrew’s Hotel in Nuwara Eliya. It used to be the Scots’ club and was renamed by golf-mad Scots. It’s not long until an old man in a claret waiter’s jacket asks you to guess how old his balls are.
The Old Course Restaurant
“Modernised”
The snooker table at St Andrew’s is 120 years old, and its ivory balls only slightly younger. The snooker room used to be a dance hall. Here, tea and coffee planters worked and played. Scot James Taylor first planted tea in the area in 1867. Some of the early equipment is still to be seen. Kandy – Sri Lanka’s lakeside second city – has a tea museum, but Nuwara is one big museum of tea and colonialism. During the Second World War, St Andrew’s was used for R&R for servicemen. The first patients were from HMS Hermes, bombed by the Japanese off Sri Lanka’s east coast. The old Tudorness has gone and the hotel recently glassily modernised. The restaurant doesn’t just serve steak and kidney pie and rice pudding as it once did, but some customs remain – like being offered a hot water bottle after your mutton curry.
Down the road is a racecourse and a golf club with fireplaces in the men’s locker room. The 5,550-yard, par-70 Nuwara Eliya Golf Club is still a great test of golf. Green fees are $80. Golf is part of Sri Lanka’s new tourism drive. You can get seaplane connections between most of the courses. After Royal Calcutta, Royal Colombo is the oldest golf club outside the UK.
“The City of Light” was discovered by Dr John Davy, brother of Sir Humphry Davy the chemist, while on a hunting party in 1818, and was made into a health resort and sanatorium for British officials. In 1828, Sir Edward Barnes, the island’s Governor, built himself a mansion there – Barnes Hall – now the Grand Hotel.
The Tea Terrace
“Fashionable”
Nuwara Eliya was transformed “from a wild open plain into a busy British hamlet”. It became a holiday resort, particularly fashionable in April – the hottest month of the year. Prison labour built a Gymkhana Club and the golf course opened in 1889. The ‘toy train’ from Nanu Oya opened in 1903 when the course was described as “a varying and sporting one from the first drive to the last putt. The turf was gloriously green and springy at every point, while the Club House was admirably located.”
My fondest memory of it is a “No Loitering” sign on a tree flanking the fairway. And reading from the club history that golf “provided the most ideal muscular exercise” and “might be played by the septuagenarian with nothing left to him but a cleek, an iron, a niblick and his bunker language.”
St Andrew’s Hotel is owned by Jetwing, which also owns The Lighthouse in Galle. South Sri Lanka was decimated by the tsunami of Boxing Day 2004. Over 100,000 people lost their lives. At Peraliya, two carriages remain of the “Queen of the Sea” train, swamped by the tidal wave – killing a thousand people on their way back from market. The Japanese government donated a giant memorial statue.
Gem Suite inside Jetwings St.Andrews Hotel
“Cleanest in the world”
Sri Lanka is rebuilding itself. It is beginning to pick itself up – to go back to where it once was.
You sense this with the Mount Pedro Range behind and a china tea set in front of you, out on the lawn of St Andrew’s Hotel. Everyone in Sri Lanka is a tea connoisseur and wants to talk about “The Leaf That Cheers the Globe”. Tea factories give tastings. Hotels provide lessons in tea appreciation – to educate your palate, to make you smile when you provenance your cuppa.
“Sri Lankan tea liquor is the cleanest in the world regarding pesticide residuals,” said my guru proudly. “But of course the best tea is brewed in a gold pot.”
I chortled. My teacher looked at me with concern, suspecting the worst.
“You aren’t a tea bag man, are you?” he asked, with the disgust of one who feared he was in the presence of a true philistine – more interested in being hydrated than becoming lusty.
Selected departure dates in Sept 2025
Three nights staying at Aliya Resort & Spa, Sigiriya – Aliya Resort & Spa
Two nights staying at Earls Regency, Kandy – Earl’s Regency
Two nights Jetwing St Andrew’s – Jetwing St. Andrew’s
One night Sentido Heritance Negombo – Sentido Heritance Negombo
Seven days with chauffeur guide – read the benefits here of why this is an amazing way to see the best of Sri Lanka – Get to know our Sri Lanka
Includes flights from London with Sri Lankan Airlines
£2180 per person (based on 2 adults sharing)
Kevin Pilley is a former professional cricketer and the ex-chief staff writer of PUNCH magazine. His humour, travel, lifestyle and food & drink work appears worldwide. He has been published by over 600 titles. Allegedly.
