Kandy Tour
KANDY TOUR
The city and the region has been known by many different names and versions of those names. Some scholars suggest that the original name of Kandy was Katubulu Nuwara located near present Watapuluwa. However the more popular historical name is Senkadagala or Senkadagalapura, officially Senkadagala Siriwardhana Maha Nuwara (meaning ‘great city of Senkadagala of growing resplendence’), generally shortened to ‘Maha Nuwara’. According to folklore this name originated from one of the several possible sources.
Tea Museum, Tea Factory and Tea Plantations – Kandy
The Ceylon Tea Museum at Hantane, three kilometers from Kandy city .The museum consists of four floors. The ground floor and the second floor exhibit very old items of machinery and the first floor consists of a library and an auditorium with facilities for audio visual presentations. The third floor is allocated to tea sales outlets, where a selection of Sri Lanka’s fine tea is available. The entire top floor is a restaurant. A panoramic view of the Kandy town surrounded by the beautiful Hunasgiriya, Knuckles Range and the Matale range of hills can be viewed through a telescope mounted on the fourth floor. The grounds surrounding the Tea Museum are to be landscaped with different varieties of teas. Kandy is a mandatory stop virtually on every tourist’s itinerary and the location of the Ceylon Tea Museum at Hantane enhances the attraction of the hill country to visitors. Additionally, its proximity to the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens and Loolecondera estate, where tea was first grown commercially in Sri Lanka makes Hantane the perfect location.
Loolecondera
Loolecondera is synonymous with the birth of tea in Ceylon, and at Taylors Hill you are only 7km away from the estate and factory. Although there are numerous plantations around Sri Lanka’s hill country, this is the heart of the history and legacy of production starting over 150 years ago. The Loolecondera Tea Factory Sri Lanka is the country’s first tea factory, set up by James Taylor in respect of whom this hotel is named, its estate a beguiling and unique experience for visitors, representing the important and vital history of tea in Ceylon from its inception.
Tea
Tea became such a key product for Sri Lanka because the previous crop until the mid-19th century was coffee, but it was viciously destroyed by a fungus aptly named “Devastating Emily”, and James Taylor was the man who engineered the early production of tea in response to this natural and uncontrollable devastation. Born in Aberdeen in Scotland, James Taylor arrived in Ceylon in 1852 at only 17 years of age. Having initially been posted at Naranghena Estate, he was soon transferred to nearby Loolecondera.
