Wednesday 15th January 2025

Today I was tasked with visiting potential places for volunteers at Tea Leaf Centre Maskeliya to stay, so I obviously didn't want to interrupt them too early in the morning. I had a late breakfast at 09:00, then proceeded to chat through options with my current host at Daresh Home Stay. It is very basic accommodation, but I have only had to pay 4,000LKR per night for bed and breakfast, and he is prepared to reduce that to 3,500LKR per night for volunteers staying more than 2 weeks.

My next visit was to Heavenhills Guest House, which is literally across from where I was staying, and is run by a Namal Kumara, a former student at Tea Leaf, so I enjoyed chatting with him. He has a rather more upmarket place to stay, and it is certainly worth the 7,000LKR per night for bed and breakfast, which he is prepared to knock down to 6,000LKR per night for volunteers staying for more than 2 weeks. Both of these places have 2 rooms for guests.

I then visited Butterfly Mountain Lake Side (where I stayed when attending Gobi and Kavi's wedding on 28th November 2019), Pekoe Lodge, and finally Riverside Guest House (where I have stayed regularly). Suffice to say, Tea Leaf now has a number of accommodation options for future volunteers according to their budgets, as all volunteers (myself included) are entirely self-funding, paying for their flights, accommodation and food, as Tea Leaf is a registered charity.

I popped into Tea Leaf Centre Maskeliya next, where it was incredibly busy, with staff interviewing a colossal number of potential students (only 165 can be accommodated), and Gobi training a very large group of employees for the Cookstove Project. It was a brilliant reminder to me of how successful Tea Leaf is, and the amazing impact that it has had on the Tamil people from the tea estates in the Hill Country, a thought I reflected on as I travelled back to Nuwara Eliya.

Photos today of this morning's visits to discover suitable accommodation for volunteers - shots with me with Devakanthan from Daresh Home Stay, Namal Kumara from Heavenhills Guest House, and Kanachana from Butterfly Mountain Lake Side, plus views of the amazing scenes at Tea Leaf Centre, Maskeliya, where I received such a lovely welcome, even though they were incredibly busy today!







Comments

  1. CharlesJanuary 16, 2025 at 12:09 AM

    I hadn't realized quite how popular the TL courses have become - a remarkable achievement, as you must feel.

    ReplyDelete

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