Why I LOVE Sri Lanka (Sinharaja Forest) 🇱🇰

Two days at a lodge in the hills near Sinharaja Forest, with Mac, Ali and another creator — and the last substantial stop of the Sri Lanka series.

Obs: Harry says at the top that the group was invited to stay, and the lodge’s booking details are in the video description. Under the bundle’s rule on advertising the accommodation is described but not named, and this page records what the stay involved rather than where it was.

Getting there

• A couple of hours from the nearest road worth the name, part of it off-road, and they need a Land Rover for the track.
• No phone signal at all, which Harry — who has spent the trip hunting for wi-fi — treats as the selling point.

The lodge, as an idea

The provider isn’t named; the format is worth recording because it isn’t common in the country:

• Individual pyramid-shaped huts on two floors, each with its own wi-fi.
• An infinity pool facing the mountains, which he calls the best he has swum in.
• A yoga and meditation deck, unused because there were too few guests for classes.
• Tea plantations directly below, with pickers working them — leaves collected into a sack slung from a strap across the forehead.
• Full board with staff cooking to order, which is the part he thanks them for at the end.

Eating off a banana leaf

Lunch is served in clay pots onto a banana leaf, eaten by hand, with a bowl of water for the fingers: rice, chicken, salad, beetroot, dal and a poppadum-like cracker. It is his first time doing either, and his verdict is that hands feel wrong for about a minute and then don’t.

Milk rice turns up again at breakfast, and he says it improves every time he eats it.

The smallholding

A working farm along the track, and the group is simply invited in.

• Goats, kept for milk — the farmer’s own explanation, and he stresses the protein.
• Cows, dogs, and a wild jungle fowl, which Harry spends some time trying and failing to pick up. It is, as the others point out, a chicken.
• The goats live under the house, with the babies inside it.

The hike

Driven about 20 minutes uphill, then about 4 km on foot, past phone masts and a naval base — which he notes is an odd place for one.

• A bee or wasp nest across the path, which their guide says is genuinely dangerous. They pass it in silence, twice, going up and coming back.
• A hairy caterpillar he is warned is poisonous — don’t touch.
• Monkeys audible below the lookout, and a sheer drop off it that makes him step back.
• The lookout is in and out of cloud, and he decides he prefers the fog to the view.
• Their guide says almost nobody comes here — some days a few visitors, most days none.
• A natural pool afterwards, clear and cold and swimmable, and the one place on the trip where he meets other tourists.

He does the whole thing ill. He has a cold, can’t smell anything, jokes about what that might mean in March 2022, and nearly doesn’t go. His line — sometimes you just have to not be a little princess and get on with it — is on do hard things on purpose.

The tea factory

They walk into a working factory and are shown round by the duty manager. Harry is careful to say this was not an arranged tour, that the staff spoke little English, and that he therefore can’t give the full process — which is why what follows is partial.

• The building dates from 1962.
• Roughly five stages, including oxidation.
• Hand sorting first: workers pick through the raw green leaf, separating it and removing what shouldn’t be there.
• Weighing, then drying, with the dried leaf dropped down to the next floor.
• Rolling and blending through progressively larger machines, old ones and one much newer.
• Further drying, until it is a very fine flake.
• Packing by hand at the end.
• The workforce here is Tamil-speaking; his Sinhala gets nowhere.

Tea is Sri Lanka’s biggest export, per Harry.

Two smaller things

• A tea shop on the way, where he rates the local tea above English breakfast tea, and buys cinnamon.
• He asks when Ceylon became Sri Lanka and gets two different answers on camera — 1948, and something in the 1970s (from video – unverified; the video doesn’t settle it, and 1948 is the independence date already recorded elsewhere).
• He announces he is leaving the country within the week, without saying where for.

Key moments

• [00:30] Two hours off-road, and no signal.
• [03:34] Tea pickers working below the huts.
• [07:13] Lunch, in clay pots on a banana leaf.
• [09:13] The infinity pool.
• [12:21] The smallholding, and the goats.
• [19:14] The hike starts, past the naval base.
• [20:45] Doing it anyway, while ill.
• [22:08] The wasp nest.
• [25:23] The drop, and the guide on how few people come.
• [28:31] The natural pool.
• [33:10] When did Ceylon become Sri Lanka?
• [34:42] Inside the tea factory.
• [39:14] His caveat: this is not an official tour.

Extracted pages

• Sri Lanka
• Sinharaja Forest
• Mac
• Ali
• Do hard things on purpose