Inside Sri Lanka’s Forgotten Countryside
May 1949 so just after World War II ended and this Factory is absolutely crazy it seems to have been taken Maybe by a fire hello cute such a chubby little boy I don't know what I bought this guy is trying to tell you but watch out let the man pass drunken people drunken people what is that arrak it's arrak no it says toddy a toddy like toddy palm toddy palm wedding wedding oh it's Hall it's for weddings good morning from Hatton yesterday we went all the way from Matale to Hatton so we moved a little bit South kind of 3 hours south and what better place could there be than the local temple wow! I feel like starting off in the local temples or the local church is always kind of our favourite thing to do because it gives you a little bit of an understanding of your surroundings basically and finally enough obviously we're standing in a Hindu temple right now and just over here is a Christian Church I love that about Sri Lanka so much of course that was a lot of hard work for the country of Sri Lanka to bring Unity to the people but as of right now all of the religions live very very peacefully together and it's always such a nice thing to to see now of course you can buy these beautiful offerings here as well from amazing locals that are here in hatton town center and this here is hatton Town Center now I'm not going to lie to you guys we walked through here just a short uh like an hour ago just before breakfast and I have to say there's not much going on in Hatton Town Center uh Hatton Town itself seems to be a place for tourists to basically pass through on the way to Adams Peak or Nuwara Eliyah but today we want to show you a side of Hatton the real local side of Hatton and all of the outskirts around here because I think there's a few hidden gems to discover around here that haven't really properly gotten exposure yet everyone knows about Nuwara Eliyah a lot of people know about Adam's Peak there's thousands of videos about those locations but not that many about the surrounding areas and the local true local areas of hatton so let's check out the beautiful area here in the central Province today both of us are wearing helmets we just look like absolute dorks as you guys can see hello just quite literally 1 minute outside of Hatton and here we are what a beautiful place I am so excited to go deeper into this now I'm not 100% sure but I think this is a tea oh yeah now I can see it yes it's a tea Factory wow how cool is that it's the dickoya tea Factory that's really neat to see it uh directly so close to the streets a lot of times the tea factories are a little bit sort of tucked away in the tea uh Hills and here on the right we have a Hindu temple a smaller one very nice and because a lot of times the tea pluckers are tamil people so of course the Hinduism is very strong in these communities and here is the church again why is there always a church when there's a Hindu temple yes indeed so welcome to Dickoya which is a I think a small town just outside of Hatton and when I say just outside I mean quite literally a 5 or 10minute drive and this seems to be the town hall of Dickoya or abuali town hall 1997 I'm not too sure if that's when it was built it doesn't look like it but the very interesting and almost Colonial looking building it seems to be a lot older than the late '90s that's a nice contrast very interesting as well it's nice to be able to have the scooter again the freedom that comes along with having a scooter here in Sri Lanka is unmatched it just opens up the whole country to you hello good morning this building 1997 oh 1997 wow Town Hall yeah yeah no no no wedding wedding oh it's for wedding oh it's for a wedding wedding wow people have weddings there ah okay okay ah I didn't understand the the yeah yeah yeah okay thank you cool thank you so much thank you yeah I do think it's from 1997 W I think it has nothing to do with colonial buildings it's just that uh it kind of looks like Dickoya might be one of those places that might be a little bit forgotten and this is what can happen to houses hello how are you hello that's a lot of beer beer beer oh Ginger Beer this one egb it's not it's not egb what is that arrack it's arrack no it says toddy a toddy like toddy palm toddy palm oh coconut coconut tody oh okay okay you'll be very happy a lot of drinking huh drinking drinking byebye my God any who what I tried to say was this is what can happen when these types of places might be a little bit forgotten over time and uh just in under 30 years there might be a lot of Decay because the weather here is quite harsh actually it's not uh super nice calm weather if you know what I mean so people have uh firewood and you'll actually see people collecting firewood quite a bit here here in the highlands because of how high up we are hello how are you good we are about 1200 meters up in elevation so it's pretty substantial it's pretty substantially High um it's high enough that you don't need an AC you don't even really need a fan to be turned on it's cool enough without all that stuff but people have firewood just to keep warm so for a lot of the local people here in Sri Lanka it's actually very cold at this elevation hello Hi how are you good Yesa I agree oh yeah yes you are Tamil yeah yeah yes nice man you want something what did you get to eat I don't know I tried to ask him what what is this one you only want toddy and arrack I tried to ask but he didn't speak English I don't know what I bought this guy is trying to tell you but what are we talking it's made with lentil or what okay oh oh careful careful let the man pass drunken people drunken yes it's called l so he agrees this guy has had this one is sweet apparently oh it's good tasty tasty yeah have one have one yeah it's going to make you more drunk though cuz there's sugar in there good yeah very good very good very good very good thank you so much nandri bye-bye bye-bye it's okay I think we just got saved by a local the uh the guy definitely had one too many hello how are you good he definitely had one too many I think people were even walking by as he was talking to us telling us that he had way too much to drink so that's unfortunate it's an unfortunate part as well of uh a lot of the more rural areas I think of Sri Lanka because uh obviously there's not much jobs not many jobs going around in a lot of these areas unless you're willing to be like a farmer or to basically work in your family business or if you're if you're enough to have family that has a business so that's a big big part of it we definitely have seen um a lot more people struggling with alcoholism in these areas but I think it's normal look at how cute this one is adorable Rottweiler hello how are you yeah the giant paw wow hello so cute such a chubby little boy you're so girl it's a girl it's a girl yeah okay wow so this here is very interesting so it's actually a foxing center where you can make calls you can send faxes this quite literally looks like something from the ' 80s or the '90s I was I was wondering how many people use still okay when when did it stop are you coming Germany Germany can I be seated no problem noely yeah the name is the name ah okay just for the name when did it stop when did it when did it finish about 2 years 2 years two years two years ago okay very long time though yeah yeah very nice sign very beautiful yes is bye-bye thank you thank you nandri nry by byebye sorry I needed to know how long like if it's still ongoing with the faxing and the until 2 years ago so until 2022 yeah there were people doing local calls there and faxing stuff I haven't seen a fax machine in like 20 years yeah hello come hi good morning B come [Music] hello wow look at this for a bus the party bus hello and just like that I think we've walked ourselves out of Dickoya so an incredibly small town here in rural Sri Lanka very full bus but a very interesting town and it does have the feeling that there's not much going into it at the moment but the people here do seem to be quite content let's jump on the bike there's plenty more places to explore around Hatton that that's not Nuwara Eliyah like I said plenty of places have plenty of exposure and we in this series in Sri Lanka we want to try and shine a light on the truly hidden gems there's plenty of food here really amazing fresh fruit everywhere as well hello and we found ourselves a little church that seems to be nestled in between all of the tea plantations the pine trees and just nestled into beautiful nature wow doesn't get much more beautiful than this this is Christ Church Warleigh which Hatton like the name Hatton itself is uh comes from it's English it's an Eng it is a place actually in England and Warleigh is also a place in England now I'm not too sure how cor how correlated those two places are but uh this church I'm not too sure when it's built but it looks very very old 18 since since 1878 there's a sign I should just read built entirely out and under the church It also says 1878 built entirely out of stone out of brick yeah it's a very uncommon to see it like this WOW let's put away the helmets and uh check this beautiful church out what an absolutely gorgeous place this is now upon coming in here we're greeted by a graveyard leading up to the church itself and believe it or not here lies William re reev tatham that's not a Sri Lankan name so I think that a lot of the people that seem to be buried here are actually English people that would have been here so yes this man was born on the 25th of March in 1861 and died on the 17th of August in 1904 wow talk about history talk about a very interesting time in history Alan Long price um all of the graves seem to be kind of from 1890 to 1910 approximately but all of these people died very young like this man here for example died age 33 33 years old yeah well 41 45 yep the life expectancy back in the late 1800s uh would have been probably around probably early 40s would be a typical age for many people to live to so got 36y olds I'm very surprised by how well preserved these graves are it's like comparatively if you look at these types of graves in Europe they are nowhere near as well preserved as these ones yeah we have graveyards obviously in Europe all over Europe from these time periods people that passed away in the like late late 1800s early 1900s but you're not going to see them in this type of a condition this is pristine it's incredibly clean well kept very peaceful as well there's a lot of people as well with the surname brown brown yeah saw like four or five very very typical British surname cecil Howard Stewart wow and the church itself doesn't get any more picturesque than this talk about an absolutely beautiful structure proper Old English structure right here hello hello what a beautiful place yeah so cool wow hello how are you fineo this church is truly very special and uh the priest that just showed us around he has been working here for 25 years and he's saying that a lot of people from various countries visit this place every single day he's here every single day for 25 years he says every single morning I believe he said from like 8 to 12 or something like that very cool and from here you have an absolutely stunning view over the lake wow there's even some people kayaking down there in the lake which looks very very peaceful I'm curious to know where you can rent those kayaks that would be very interesting to do cuz this Lake the color of it is just so special it's kind the very like green blue nearly turquoise very nice wow can you believe this it has to be the most beautiful location of a church that I've ever seen in my life and that's not an exaggeration at all doesn't get much more Scenic than this we are quite literally surrounded below us by the tea plantations of the Hatton area and this massive beautiful Lake in front of us here as well this is something else there's even people like rafting out on the lake as well M it's gorgeous that's what I just said I'm wondering where you can rent The Kayaks yeah or the rafts or whatever you want to call them and down here you even have some newer Graves as well these seem to be from 1995 you can obviously very easily spot the new Graves this one is 1985 wow what a place so this Lake that we are driving along right now is actually not a lake it's a reservoir so it's a it's a man-made lake and oh my God it's stunning I cannot believe it just the the views from the scooter are absolutely insane here the nature is just something else of course you have a lot of tea plantations here which is agriculture but still so much nature there in the back as well wow is this a old tea Factory yes nice can you go inside no dangerous you can okay you want to check it out yeah I'm going to bring the bike up bring the bike nandri wow this seems to be an old kind of abandoned tea Factory sorry we just kept driving for a while all the way through Norwood to see if we can see something interesting because the small villages I mean they're all cool in their own way but they all are also a little bit similar so we wanted to see if we can find something interesting and I think this is the interesting I think you have to be very careful with open toe shoes here let's just see what we can see the boys said you can go inside but I'm not too sure I think you can just open the door over there there's the door sorry crazy I wonder from when this is It's properly oh there's some signs up there entirely abandoned so like the main the main industry obviously of these Highland areas as you can tell the main sort of uh demographic of people once again is Sams and the tea picking is definitely in full swing at the moment we actually saw probably a couple hundred tea Pickers Tams that were out in the Rolling Hills around here picking the tea and this Factory is absolutely crazy it seems to have been taken Maybe by a fire and that's actually really funny cuz that's a sprinkler alarm from Manchester this is a sprinkler alarm that's from Manchester in the UK very very cool super interesting little find that we came across here on the bike they put teaes in front of the door is there boxes of tea in front oh yeah true these are boxes that would have would block off the door but they're probably used as well to actually have to gather the tea in and this glass here is very very old you can feel the age of that glass it's single pain and here is where I'm assuming a fire took place it seems like the fire would have started somewhere here and just basically taken this whole section of the tea Factory with it very eerie sort of a place here the roof is pretty much gone or closed down and local started to take scrap metals that's also something that could have happened as well is it could have literally just gone out of business a long time ago uh maybe when the the British left for example and uh since then maybe local people have been taking the pieces of the factory for themselves to use asz I'm sure a lot of what this fact was constructed out of was probably decent Quality Sheet Metal and a lot of the living conditions of a lot of people around these areas unfortunately are not very high standards so um sheet metal roofs held down by bricks like these ones right here that's what I just wanted to say all of the walls look like kind of like similar to the roofs of the um little sheds that you see all over y people live in so could be that they removed it but not sure of course anything could have happened here but there is a little football field here for local kids which is cool yeah this is one thing that Sri Lanka does incredibly well no matter how uh poor or working class or lower class the area might be they always manage to turn a space into whe a football field or a cricket field or basketball area for people to play it's just it's very very nice and it gives a gives it a community feeling it's is funny with the tea production chimney just kind of in the middle of the football field crazy only in Sri Lanka you have the chimney here and there's a ladder the ladder is actually still fully intact so every Rong of that ladder is still in place so you could actually climb up to the top of that and you're probably going to get a pretty crazy view but I don't know how willing I would be to climb up that yeah usually I'm the more adventurous one of the two think but no I don't think it's a smart idea to go up it looks a bit Rusty wow talk about going back in time oh 1949 May 1949 at least a chimney wow so just after World War II ended this was erected here I'm wondering actually was this Factory probably functioning then during the second world war wow what a view what a beautiful place unfortunately the caught up to us so we had to make a hasty return back to our guest house here in Hatton and I have to say this guest house is one of the most unique places that we've ever stayed so far in Sri Lanka and we've stayed in some pretty quirky places but this here has to be on top of the list so we couldn't finish this video without showing you guys around this place this here is called te- Hills Bungalow in pattern so definitely check this out we have a fire pit which I've never seen before in an accommodation like this where it's just readily available like this very interesting like I said earlier people collect firewood so we could actually go and probably get some firewood put it here and have ourselves a cozy little fiery evening the views as I just showed you out over beautiful estate full of tea so the smell is amazing especially right now with the rain coming down this here is a whole nice seating area you've got a sink to wash your hands you even have what I imagine is probably an idea for an eventual bar situation or maybe a restaurant or something like that very very nice coming in here you have like a big lobby area as well plenty of seats tons and tons of space look at this potential for a very very beautiful kitchen you even have an ironing station as well I'm sure that you can do your laundry I think there's a washing machine just over there to do your laundry they've got a room for a driver or for someone if you're doing a tour or something like that if you're bringing a driver he can sleep in the room over there and I want to show you guys the room as well because wow it is unbelievable this is actually our room believe it or not but I'm not going to show you that because we're not clean people put it that way the second we arrive somewhere it kind of feels like our suitcase explodes so it just close everywhere so we're going to show you a different room though yeah yeah we have we have this whole place to ourselves Believe It or Not uh like I said people just kind of pass through Hatton so they just head straight towards noira Ayah or they'll just literally stop here maybe for a night before doing Adam's Peak there's literally nobody here it's just us in this place since we arrived I think we saw two foreigners maybe they just looked like they were actually getting on the bus or something exactly look at this room look how epic these rooms are it's actually kind of done in like a real old English style so you've got high ceilings it's ceiling fans as well there's no AC you have absolutely no need for an AC up here in the highlands it's actually pretty cold right now um because of the rain and this here I believe is a family room so you've got two double beds you even have this sort of like a chill single bed for maybe some kids you've got beautiful balcony this here is actually just a private balcony for probably a family overlooking that beautiful view again you've got Kell you've got fridge you've got loads of glasses and everything that you could need and and have a look at the bathroom bathrooms here are absolutely crazy wow and this one here is no exception so you've got these big beautiful bathtubs free standing free standing as well which is really cool and it's done again in like a really old style so like it's one of the most elegant looking places like this is a crazy bathroom and it's so much space I think up here there's three rooms that are available plus the extra room for a driver or anybody like that this is uh out of this world and it's very very cost friendly as well I think we're paying somewhere between 20 and 25 a night or Euro a night so it's fantastic our room is pretty much the exact same just that we only have one bed instead of three yeah exactly and the common theme of our room is more like yellow and gold so this one seems to be a little bit more kind of silver and white yeah it's really really amazing though like it's one of the cooler accommodations I think that we've came across in Sri Lanka and I have to say it's incredibly clean so like quite literally spotlessly clean which is crazy it's located in a very quiet area as well as you might have seen this the there's always just like one Main Street where there's a lot of hustle and bustle a lot of traffic and this is kind of tucked away so it's really quiet and nice and they also have a restaurant yes which we had food in last night and that was really really beautiful very tasty food yeah you can get stuff like uh English breakfast so they do a lot of like English inspired things they also do Sri Lankan food we had a Sri Lankan omelet for breakfast breakfast is included as well in the rate for the rooms so yeah this place I think is a fantastic little gem here up in the highlands of faton and I hope that we've sh you guys a special side to this particular area of Sri Lanka I haven't seen any videos about these surrounding areas deoa and the whole surrounding area there is something else like we are genuinely Blown Away by how friendly the people are by how gorgeous the nature is this place is a must visit and don't skip it don't just head straight towards the more heavily visited places because where there's more tourism a lot of times the and the flow of money is kind of controlled and it goes through certain people whereas when you come to places that are lesser discovered you're going to be spending your money with the right people and people that genuinely do need it and need the tourism and we can feel it here in this place this place definitely needs more visitors and we're also very close to Adams Peak so in case you're planning on hiking Adams Peak this would be the perfect location for it the perfect place if the weather is good yeah yeah it's only like quite literally around 20 minutes uh drive from it so just get yourself a scooter or they actually will drive you to Adam's Peak and you can arrange it through them but for now my name is Luke my name is Naomi we're the two M explorers and this is your reminder to keep exploring and we'll see you guys in the next Lan and Adventure HTI for watching HTI nry byebye
2024-12-14 22:10
