Colonial attraction meets Vogue tropical-photo-shoot-style at Rosyth Property Home. Two hours north of Colombo airport, Rosyth Property Home is the right soft-landing spot for a Sri Lanka arrival.
House owners Farzana and Neil Dobbs creatively mix the retro type of the unique 1926 tea planter’s bungalow with modern design aptitude.
Set inside the 62 acres of a tea and rubber plantation, Rosyth supplies a spread of onsite Sri Lankan experiences: early morning yoga, cookery courses, a plantation stroll, spa remedies, tea-tasting at their new tea-factory and excellent domestically impressed delicacies.
The welcome
Rosyth Property organized for a driver to satisfy us on the airport and ship us to this luxurious boutique resort a few miles from Kegalle.
While porters take baggage to our suite, we’re welcomed with a calming ginger and cinnamon tea. Plus a therapeutic massage for drained ft.
Many a weary traveller, soothed by the masseur’s fingers, instantly ebook their first spa remedy.
The suite
Clove crops, wrapped with pepper creeper, and tea bushes appropriately line the trail to the Tea suite. Jack tree wooden, simply mistaken for the wealthy deep tones of mahogany, frames the massive home windows and doorways.
Each line of sight inside the gentle room focuses on a dramatic plunging valley of mahogany, palm and but extra clove and tea bushes. White wisps of cloud partially obscure a distant craggy peak.
Textured oriental rattan runs from the bedhead, via the suite and out onto the chairs and sun-loungers on the terrace. A gentleman’s valet stand, with a drawer for cufflinks, is a Somerset Maugham days-of-empire contact. Burnt orange blinds convey dashes of color to the straightforward color scheme.
A wall behind the mattress supplies storage and successfully a dressing room. A discreet alcove neatly homes the fridge in addition to the tea and occasional services. Nothing is allowed to detract from the principle attraction: the panoramic view.
The lavatory
The inside lavatory has two wash foundation and a bathe.
Outdoors, on the terrace, an indulgent deep tub once more appears to be like out over the valley.
The services
Recent fruit platters alongside Sri Lankan egg hoppers are the celebrities of breakfasts served within the eating pavilion. Burgers, salads, soups and wraps can be found all through the day.
Within the evenings, a workforce of skilled cooks run via a repertoire of conventional Sri Lankan favourites. Dinner for Sri Lankans is not only rice and one curry of beef, rooster, fish or greens however an array of maybe bean, aubergine, pink lentil and spinach curries in addition to a sambal speckled with chilli flakes. And, then in fact, a dahl too.
Keep three or 4 evenings and also you’ll benefit from the flaming food-theatre of Sri Lankan road meals, as cooks’ chopping knifes conflict like cymbals.
Solar-loungers encompass a sapphire of a swimming pool. Choose a ebook from the library and chill out for an hour or two.
Take a plantation stroll with naturalist Hetti previous the natural vegetable gardens. Then he’ll show how the property’s rubber bushes are tapped. A few of that rubber will discover its manner into latex surgical gloves.
Location
A 20 minute drive results in Pinnawala the place you’ll be able to stroll with elephants and feed them an outsize fruit salad. A mere aperitif for the 150kg of meals they eat every single day. Assist with elephant tub time too.
Kandy, residence of the Temple of the Sacred Tooth with its artifical lake, is barely an hour away. Cowl your legs and shoulders, rent a information and take off your sneakers for an introduction to the legacy of the twenty eighth Buddha. Our information emphasises that followers don’t pray. They worship.
A free tour spherical Kandy’s Herb and Spice gardens is an in depth introduction to the side-effect-free wonders of Ayurvedic drugs however you might want to withstand the gross sales pitch on pink oil for arthritic knees, child pineapple for weight reduction and treatments that work to clean pores and skin.
“No Nivea, no Ponds,” exhorts our information eyeing up our wrinkles. On a grander scale there are the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kandy.
Different good touches
That is light and honest Sri Lankan hospitality at its perfect. Half the employees emerge to wave goodbye, as if we had been royalty.
The Dobbs provided work on the property to the 70 households who had misplaced jobs when the close by tea manufacturing unit burnt down, despite the fact that they weren’t the homeowners. They proceed to provide breakfast for native college kids thrice per week.
Hetti, the naturalist, is aware of the whereabouts of each frog and gecko across the property home, realizing too when the pond lilies will open their flowers.
One of the best bit
The Dobbs are working to revamp one small a part of Sri Lanka’s troubled tea business. More and more, recruiting pluckers, keen to obtain a mere £3 a day for lengthy hours in powerful tropical circumstances, is turning into troublesome.
Rosyth’s pluckers decide one leaf and a bud, relatively than the standard two leafs and a bud, to supply a hand-rolled artisan tea. Income from this high-end product are shared between the staff.
Friends on the tea-tasting expertise, studying find out how to roll and slurp, transfer via inexperienced tea to medium high quality teas and at last to a pink-rimmed clear amber liquid freed from any bitter hints. Far faraway from on a regular basis builder’s day that is the Dom Perignon of teas.
The associated fee
A 3 evening keep in off-season begins from £390 per particular person, primarily based on two sharing a Traditional Room, excluding flights and transfers.
The ultimate verdict
Rosyth’s 10 rooms vary throughout budgets from the unique easy rooms within the bungalow to the uber-luxurious Rock Villa.
That includes excellent Sri Lankan meals, Rosyth Property Home is an expensive base camp for a tour of the island or for a ultimate few days of leisure earlier than heading for the airport.
Disclosure: Our keep was sponsored by Rosyth Property Home.
