Journey through the land of tea
Unable to withstand the cold, dullness, dissatisfied faces in transport, I decided to go somewhere, where there is a warm sea, to a visa-free country that has not yet been fully mastered by our people. My choice fell on Sri Lanka))) I got much more than I wanted - a warm ocean +28, a pleasant climate, an exotic trip. Surprised the people - very poor, but happy. People are very friendly, smiling and not yet insolent (by analogy with Turkey and Egypt). The most vivid impressions are elephant riding, the grandeur of Buddhist temples, monkeys running through the streets, a man on a rusty bicycle, taking out sapphires wrapped in newspaper from his shirt pocket. As it turned out, he mines them himself in Ratnapura; sapphires, surprisingly, turned out to be real and clean (they wore them to a jeweler), although we bought them from him for 10 dollars per carat.
Traveling the whole country is realistic in a week, which we did. A separate story is tea plantations. Tea grows high in the mountains. Only the top 3 leaves are removed from the bush. Each woman must collect at least 20 kg of tea per day. It would seem that all day in the heat to pick 3 leaves from a bush and stuff a bag on your back with them is slave labor, but, oddly enough, all the women smile at the same time. So nice - the tea that we drink is collected with love!
