Nuwara Eliya - In the Highlands

We quickly packed up in Kandy in the morning and left without breakfast. There should be something along the way. As soon as you hit a more urban area, the traffic is terrible. It's crowded, somewhat confusing, and turning right while driving on the left side of the road is quite exciting, and the exhaust fumes are truly disgusting, feeling like they rob you of your lifespan. No one here has ever heard of catalytic converters. When a bus accelerates next to you, it first blows a significant cloud of black exhaust smoke in your face. You find yourself holding your breath more often. However, once you're a bit outside the city, you generally drive through genuinely beautiful landscapes. Nuwara Eliya is the highest city in Sri Lanka (almost 1900 meters) and a tea-growing region. So from now on, it’s uphill all the way. Our 'Rocket' (the TukTuk) is holding up well. However, we often have to tackle the inclines in 1st or 2nd gear. The scenery during the ride is fantastic. Lots of water (rivers, small waterfalls), lots of greenery, the first massive tea plantations, and the mountains. Right now, it’s peak season for the tea pickers. Just before we arrive, we contact our TukTuk rental service about the workshop. At our guesthouse, 'Rocket' is picked up by a mechanic, and three hours later he brings it back repaired. Amazing service. No cost for us. We pass the time eating and wandering around. Among other things, we relax a bit in Victoria Park. Due to the altitude, the weather here is usually very changeable, but we are lucky and it stays fair to partly cloudy. After we got our Rocket back, we drove to the highest tea plantation in the country and took a small tour of the tea factory. It was brief but interesting. Here, only black tea is produced, in many different qualities (from coarse leaves to finely ground), which then goes to the tea auction in huge bags, where the well-known tea manufacturers buy it and possibly process it further or package it nicely under their brand names. A quiet evening at the guesthouse, and tomorrow we continue through the mountains to Ella.