We passed many places on our journey in which the Belihul Oya was the most significant. The capturing sound of the Belihul Oya made us to stop our vehicle near the spring to embrace the coldness it bestows to us. The embraced coldness still remains within us to visit back to the oya again. When we reached to Badulla it was around nine in our clock which remembered us the pillow and the bed towards the freezing night.
On the second day our schedule was to travel Passara area where we had to meet some people who have been abandoning in Tea Estates. The path that we have to take was narrow and steep where we lost our minds looking at the marvelous tea bushes in line and the dew drops falling down from the sky. The nature and the people together smiled with us leaving behind a thought in our selves.
People lived in houses with partial roofs and the ground plated with cow dung with incredible odor. Animals hang around inside and outside the houses for food. Children were shivering with coldness and rain water falls all over the houses. Most of them worked for estates plucking tea leaves. Their livelihood is miserable; each and every day is a struggle to find money.
As we were lingering over the narrow paths a woman we have never met welcomed to her small house with a smile to have a cup of tea. The house gave tremendously a bad odour of cow dung. We were offered with a broken chair and she left to the kitchen and brought us milk tea, which nobody wants to taste it in a place like as such. Some for the sake of her kindness however drank it while I refused it with a smile. The very next moment she came with a cup of tea full of gratitude which I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
It was the most delicious cup of Tea which I tasted ever in my life. I have never met her and in future I will never meet her, neither I cannot remember her face but even today when I happened to get a cup of tea from somebody I always compare her cup of tea in which her taste cannot be brought up by any person nor a great chef of hotel.
I do not have any photos to show her gratitude so, I am writing this story on my blog as a token of showing gratitude.
