The road from Colombo begins to rise to leave behind the tropical air and as you ascend, the climb becomes steeper and winding while the views keep you off the dizzy spell. Our car juggled up upon miles of dark wooded forest. The trail could take no more than one car on the track. Our driver pushing the tires valiantly through the forest litter was progressing slowly but also skillfully. Soon we were engulfed in the mountain mist and at five past ten, the car lights had to lit up the deep dark trail. The trail was much harder for him than us, sitting at the comfort of a backseat and to his credit, he never complained about the road. It never escaped me for a moment that there were electric wires demarcating the forest trail that might have wild creatures hawking at us. Finally, the wooded driveway merged into a landscaped walkway. All we could see was the grand glass gate of the hotel beautifully imprinted Heritance Tea factory: where tradition is alive. Welcoming us was the butler, in a cotton shirt and sarongs smiling wide as a Cheshire cat. The outside was pitch dark and it was drizzling in bits. Our driver gleefully retired to his assigned quarter and us to our guest rooms. The hotel interior reflected an old world charm with colonial-era luxury witnessed through teak wood furniture, artifacts, and period furnishings. It was a tea factory in the heydays which served the plantation known as Hethersett in Nuwara Eliya. The reception was a museum in itself studded with photo frames and storyboards of what went behind its making. One storyboard mooted there was no addition to the exterior of the hotel. The timber used in the old days was teak brought from Burma and Jarrah from Australia. The steel façade of the factory building was imported from Dorman Long, UK. The floorboards are of original pinewood imported from Sweden in 1913. We happily abided by the high tea ritual seated in the inhouse restaurant in whose corridors hung black and white photographs of eminent hill country planters and other celebrity royals who stayed here. The dinner that we were served came in fine porcelain plates with a cloche cover. It was cooked to perfection, more than perfection to say and felt were back in the 19th century Ceylon. As we crashed on a cumulus cloud of luxurious bedding of a Victorian-style four-poster bed, we woke up with the sun. I looked out at what I saw that could not tear us away from the bay window seat for long. The mist had gone by now and sunlight glints off the white façade of our hotel outhouses. In a valley squatted the main building of the hotel and I could see it from our large- size windows. I looked more closely to locate women plucking tips between the rolling rows of tea. In views such as this, we stayed in a kind of companionable silence until we finished uncountable sessions of Ceylon’s best brew from the estate. In the past two days I happily gave in to luxury, all this I knew would not last. But also balanced between my life of luxury and hours of committing to a book on Srilanka written by one of the island’s chronicler. Later that evening I was glued to the chapter on Nuwara Eliya. The chapter opened one unmentioned history to me, that few historians and locals were aware many things were lost in the making of these eye-pleasing, soul-stirring estates. It's said that 40% of the Islands' virgin forests were stripped down to make plantations and railways. Pine forests that stood like giants looking out over scores of hills are not endemic to Srilanka. The plant was introduced by colonists as timber reserves after chopping down the native forests. So before tea took over the hills and prim white houses with brick chimneys perched up in the hills, “these parts gave birth to a rebellion”, the writer journaled. Certainly, the long civil war was not the only battle the Sinhalese fought, it was here in the hill country in 1817, the greatest military uprising to British power ignited. As I was walking up to the crisp mountain air gazing at the sunset from the hanging balcony, one thought crowds my mind. Even after so much resistance to colonial life, today the locals themselves have made a custom of holidaying in the hills alongside the colonists just to escape the lowland heat. Maybe years of conflict Sri Lanka witnessed made the islanders determined to make the most of every day!