Haputale

Why Visit

Less visited than Ella or Nuwara Eliya, with the same tea-country scenery and the historic Lipton's Seat viewpoint nearby.

A small hill-country town perched on a ridge, with tea estates on one side and, on a clear day, views that reach all the way to the south coast.

History

Haputale grew, like much of the surrounding hill country, around the tea industry the British established here in the late 19th century, its position directly on the southern escarpment of the highlands making it both a productive tea-growing area and a strategic lookout point. Its best-known historical connection is to Sir Thomas Lipton, the Scottish-born tea magnate, who bought the Dambatenne Estate below the town in 1890 as part of building his global tea business. Lipton's Seat, a viewpoint above the estate, is named for the spot he is said to have used to survey his plantations, and Dambatenne's factory — still operating with much of its original machinery — dates from that same era. Adisham Bungalow, a Tudor-style manor house on the town's edge built in 1931 for British planter and civil servant Sir Thomas Villiers, was later donated to Benedictine monks and now operates as a monastery partly open to visitors, another layer of the area's colonial-era history.