Invicta Vlogs
Day 6 - Sri Lanka
On Saturday, we travelled from Colombo to Kandy for 6 hours on a coach. The travel was very tiring for most of us and we were all exhausted when we finally got to the hotel- Amaya Hills. However, before we reached the hotel we stopped several times for some sightseeing. This included a restaurant for lunch, a tea plantation factory and a traditional, cultural show.
We also visited a tea plantation today, where we were given a tour of the tea bushes farms and also the factory where the leaves are made to tea. The tea bushes looked a lot like any bush that we would get at home but apparently was actually much different in sense of flavour and texture, which would benefit the final tea made. The factory had no air conditioning, so therefore it was very hot. The smell of the tea made it very hard to stay in there for long as it was so strongly scented that it made people’s eyes water.
However, it was very interesting to see how tea is made and the different types of tea there are. We were able to try some tea in the shop after the tour and lots of people bought boxes of Sri Lankan tea to take home to their families.
Then we went to a traditional cultural show in Kandy. It started with a variety of musical instruments accompanied by traditional dances. There were 11 in total and these included everything from dances representing offerings to one involving fire and a form of plate spinning. They were so impressive, but one of the key highlights was when a dancer with a mask appeared in the audience! We were all quite taken aback at first, but it was so funny when they started running around us all! We also found the drums really impressive and the “orchestra” performance at the end was so good; we’d never heard anything like it before. It included three different types of drums! The costumes were also amazing and it was such a great experience to witness something that plays a massive part in Sri Lankan culture.
Written by Olivia Moss, Charna Ives and Lindsey Siwek
