Tea is one of Sri Lanka’s top exports but much of it is for multinational label teabags. On a recent trip, I search for gems among the dust.

It has just gone 6am and a tuk-tuk pulls up at Lipton’s Seat, a 1950-metre-high viewpoint above Haputale, Sri Lanka. We are in Uva, one of the seven main terroirs for Ceylon tea and the site of Sir Thomas Lipton’s first tea plantation and factory in Sri Lanka. Now called Dambatenne, the estate was founded by Lipton in 1890, though has been in Sri Lankan hands since 1930 and still sells tea to Unilever’s Lipton brand.

The early morning was supposed to deliver us a sunrise, but the mist is thick and rolls artfully upwards over the peak in waves, droplets trickling over our arms as if we are swimming in cloud. On one side is the tea estate; on the other is a picturesque valley we see intermittently as the morning fog thins and thickens.

There’s a statue of Lipton here, where he used to bring family and friends for picnics to admire the view. I’m amazed to find it’s made of fibreglass by accidentally leaning on it and having his seated form scrape along the bench, which is decorated with a puddle of condensation. I do not sit on Lipton’s lap, even for a silly photo. The statue faces towards the road rather than either of the two stunning views, an irony I can’t quite shake as I watch a pack of friendly dogs and a family of macaques take guard nearby.

Later, although it’s Sunday, a Dambatenne staffer named Sydney will give me a one-on-one tour of the factory for a small fee and then, when I express dismay at the broken orange pekoe and fannings I’m regularly offered, he will kindly go out of his way to cup a superior whole leaf orange pekoe.

But for now I take turns peering over the terraced tea and the villages below, wondering if I’m feeling how Lipton felt when he did the same more than a century ago – a little chilly and therefore prone to reaching for the tastiest remedy: a hot cup of tea.

This article originally appeared in AUSTCS enews 13 November 2018.