INTO THE HILLS

Carving a path through cloud-swathed villages and centuries-old tea estates, the new long-distance Pekoe Trail gives hikers a chance to explore Sri Lanka's quiet central highlands.

- JESSICA VINCENT

When I reach Galaha in Sri Lanka’s central highlands, the sun is high in the sky and the streets are clouded with dust. Tuk-tuks rattle around women in red saris flecked with gold, narrowly missing the one-eyed dog sleeping in the road. Amid the honking and coconut selling, I hear a familiar sound — Beethoven’s Für Elise — moving closer, crackling from a tuk-tuk selling fish buns, and bringing with it the smell of freshly baked bread.

This is where, 12 miles south of Kandy, my journey along the new Pekoe Trail — Sri Lanka’s first long-distance hiking route — begins. Its name refers to the high-grade black tea made from young leaves — a speciality of the country’s central highlands. Spanning 185 miles from Kandy in central Sri Lanka to Nuwara Eliya in the heart of the hill country, it links, with US and EU funding, an existing network of footpaths created when the British established a tea-growing industry here during colonial rule in the 19th century.

At that time thousands of stone and dirt roads were cut into the forest to transport plantation workers and cargo between tea fields, factories and the newly built railway line, so that hardwood boxes branded ‘Ceylon Tea’ could travel to Colombo’s harbour for export to Britain. It’s hoped that the new trail, which passes through dozens of remote villages and tea estates, will encourage visitors away from the country’s well-trodden Cultural Triangle and into Sri Lanka’s less-visited interior. Many of its 22 stages are now open, with the remaining ones due to follow by December.