In the morning, before breakfast, I headed out to explore a bit of the plantation surrounding the bungalow. It was a couple hours past sunrise, but as I headed down the hill, through the fields of tea, the sun just cracked the skyline opposite the ravine, casting all the green tea leaves gold. There I stood the lone white guy, in the middle of Sri Lanka, in the middle of a field surrounded by the glow of the morning. I drew deep breaths of tea and damp earth wh...

At around 10:30 AM Hoài Anh and Thắng appeared and we all hopped back into the Maruti and headed toward our next destination, a tea plantation stuck somewhere in the highlands passed Nuwara Eliya. All of us heard that the drive would be about four hours but we did not reach our final destination until after seven PM. It was a lot of driving but we did make some stops along the way. We had to stop several times outside of Delhousie for a 3-speed, rod-brake b...