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Nikkei Asia
4 days ago
- Business
- Nikkei Asia
Sri Lanka tea plantations offer a lesson in power and persistence
CENTRAL HIGHLANDS, Sri Lanka -- On a visit to Singapore in 2023, I enjoyed a Bridgerton-style afternoon tea offered by a hotel as part of a collaboration with Dilmah tea, a brand rooted in Sri Lanka. As I sipped a bespoke blend, redolent of that island's misty highlands, I found myself pondering the journey the leaves had made across the Indian Ocean to the edge of the South China Sea. Now, visiting Sri Lanka, I find myself at Ceylon Tea Trails, the world's first tea bungalow resort and a member of Relais & Chateaux, a France-based association of independent hotels. Owned by the Fernando family, the founders of the Colombo-based Dilmah Ceylon Tea Company, this collection of five heritage bungalows nestles near the Pekoe Trail, a newly established hiking path that winds through the heart of tea country in the Central Highlands region.
NDTV
11-05-2025
- NDTV
In Kasar Devi, Uttarakhand: A Luxury Boutique Hotel That Dissolves Into The Landscape
"Would you like a Shih Tzu puppy?" asked the affable young man working for Pawan Hans upon my arrival at Dehradun Airport — he was overwhelmed with a litter of five-week-old puppies. (Pawan Hans, a government-run helicopter service, operates flights to remote parts of India.) The offer was unusual, but since I already live with three dogs, I declined. Besides, my mind was more on the Kasar Devi Temple. I was reaching it by chopper to a band-aid-sized airport at Almora, the closest town. Lifting from Dehradun, fields and forests unfurled beneath me, silver rivers wreathed through scattered villages. Hills rose and folded into deep green valleys, terraced with gold and dusty emerald shades of leaf cover. Near Almora, pines thickened, the air sharpened, snow-hatted mountains appeared like joinery between earth and sky. A dirt track led me to The Kumaon, a ten-bedroom luxury boutique hotel founded by Dr Vikrom Mathur, an eminent environmentalist with a doctorate from Oxford University; he helms Transitions Research, a cutting-edge think tank in North Goa. Mathur and his business partners commissioned Colombo-based Zowa Architects, the studio co-founded by Jineshi Samaraweera and Pradeep Kodikara, to create a property — also my home through my visit — that is a masterclass in sensitive, site-responsive architecture. Special to The Kumaon is how its form dissolves into the landscape. Low-key luxe rooms with private terraces overlook layered natural courtyards, the creation palette chiefly locally sourced stone, bamboo — and poured concrete. Rooms and galleries effortlessly frame glorious views of Himalayan caps. Kodikara and Samaraweera ran with the baton of Sri Lanka modernism and pitched camp in the Himalayas to create a design language that is its own singular thing. On my evening walk, through oaks and myrtles, the terrain burned with a powerful, noble quality. A leopard had recently attacked a cow, which the villagers had buried where it was found. A few stones marked the gravesite; even at a site of loss, sacred air persisted. In the distance, rhododendrons bloomed — red, wild, and true — and a scent of lichen, rain-soaked earth, dry leaves; something timeless. *** Driving through narrow, circuitous roads to the temple, I passed stores stocked with local honey and nettle tea, boutiques that worked with women's collectives to make woollen toys for children, and cafés with million-dollar views but ugly furniture, selling sad slices of apple crumble. A renaissance on the slopes brought in Russian and Israeli tourists by the truckload (quite literally — big groups rattling along in open trucks). Dr Mathur accompanied me to Kasar Devi, telling me how he first came here as a child, enchanted by the small town of Almora and the decency of the locals, but mostly by the jungle further up, surrounding the ancient temples of Jageshwar. Here cedars stand in tall stillness, like monks absorbed in prayer; the hill fox urges cries of panic among ghostly-looking langurs. A Himalayan whistling thrush propels a song, a silvery question in the cold. The Kumaon had been his long-cherished dream — to create a refuge here for his children, and in doing so, he had created an elegant haven for other explorers as well. Presently, the car pulled up before a few food stalls at the base of Kasar Devi. The ascension to the temple — a long, high path — is flanked with pines, and it feels as if they are carrying you away from the familiar world. Now Dr Mathur pointed to a cave where Swami Vivekananda once sat in meditation. It was under the main temple, and here the great sage had experienced currents of power he described as "rare and potent." DH Lawrence came not long after, chasing the hard, clean light that might cauterise his fevers. I imagined Allen Ginsberg standing on a nearby promontory, verse foaming in his mind. Lama Anagarika Govinda wrote of this village in The Way of the White Clouds — less a settlement and more a flame that burned down the unnecessary to hold the essential. Long before scientists discovered that the ridge falls within a rare electromagnetic field — an energetic equal only to Stonehenge and Machu Picchu — the sages had already intuited what instruments would later confirm: that some places are more awake than others. You experience it here not in grand visions but in subtle adjustments of the body — the mind opening, as a window might to a gust; sediment in the heart settles. The temple does not ask to be entered. It enters you, quietly, before you notice, to remake you from within. At one point, I wondered — what was my story here? Man Visits Temple! But seekers before me had come not because Kasar Devi was their destination. They had come here, as I had — because we had been lost. But none of us imagined that this might be a homecoming. On a clear day, the Himalayan caps from The Kumaon. Photo: The Kumaon Below the temple, a rock appears suspended in the air. I sat there to gaze at the setting sun. A scorpion emerged from the dirt. In Egypt, the scorpion was never a threat; it was a sentinel, associated with the goddess Serqet; it stood at the crossroads of breath and afterlife, shielding souls from poison and secret harm. According to Jung, it represented the shadow self — to meet a scorpion was to encounter what was buried: hunger, fear, doubt, the terrible lusts. As the scorpion disappeared, my eye met the horizon, which seemed to have no end. I wondered if someone was going to adopt that Shih Tzu puppy. May I should have? That, perhaps, would have been the story.
Zawya
26-03-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Sri Lanka central bank holds rate to support economic recovery
COLOMBO - Sri Lanka's central bank kept its key policy rate unchanged for a second consecutive meeting on Wednesday to underpin the island nation's economic recovery from its worst financial crisis in decades. The overnight policy rate, introduced in November, was held steady at 8% - in line with a majority of economists polled by Reuters. "The Board remains confident that the prevailing monetary policy stance will ensure that inflation will move towards the target of 5% while supporting the growth of the domestic economy," the central bank said in its statement. The South Asian nation posted a better-than-expected 5% gross domestic product growth in 2024, signalling a turning point for an economy that plunged to its worst financial crisis in decades three years ago. Sri Lanka's consumer price index contracted 4.2% year-on-year in February, largely driven down by a reduction in household power tariffs by 20% at the start of the year. The nation suffered record inflation during the 2022 economic meltdown that was triggered by a precipitous fall in dollar reserves. Inflation is expected to reach positive territory by the middle of 2025 and track closer to the central bank's target of 5%, the bank's statement added. "If Inflation falls below target by mid-year there is a likelihood that CBSL will cut rates," said Udeeshan Jonas, strategy head at Colombo-based equity research firm CAL. "Given the possibility of global commodity prices remaining low and concerns about a global trade slowdown there is a likelihood that inflation can trend lower than the target." Sri Lanka's economy has made a "remarkable" recovery from the crisis, the IMF said earlier this month, while approving a fourth tranche of $334 million under the $2.9 billion programme. The central bank expects growth to be above 3% in 2025 due to the higher year-ago base effect and as the economy navigates global headwinds. (Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe, editing by Swati Bhat and Shri Navaratnam)
