POSTCARD N.153 - SRI LANKA

Postcard sent on the 14th July; received on the 23rd July 2024

Postcard image: A tea picker somewhere in Sri Lanka
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It’s turning into a habit.... I open the letterbox to find a letter or a postcard from Sri Lanka inside.... Ravindra just keeps feeding my curiosity about his country with image after image of places I'd like to photograph myself....Bohomȧ  sthoothi, again, Ravi. You really didn't have to, but I truly appreciate it.

Curiously enough, the postcard is once again an opportunity to relate Portugal and Sri Lanka through a third party, this of course being Britain.

In fact, there were no tea plants originally in Ceylon, Camellia sinensis - the tea plant - being native from China.

The first specimen to have been planted in the country was introduced in 1824 in the   Royal Botanical Gardens in Peradeniya (which I have already mentioned here thanks to another of Ravindra's amazing sendings), when Ceylon was under British Rule.

At the time, and all through the first half of the 19th century, Ceylon was the world's main producer of... coffee, but this would soon change and coffee would be all but wiped out of the country due to a disease in the plants, called “rust”.

As it is well known, (and here’s the connection to Portugal that will lead to the British interest in  tea, which, in turn, will lead to it being produced in Ceylon) had became an habit amongst the upper classes in UK, since its introduction by the Portuguese wife of King Charles II, Catarina de Bragança, in 1662.

So tea, with seeds from the original plant introduced in 1824, was first planted on a cofe plantation in 1866, by a certain James Taylor, a Scotsman.

The rest of the story is easy to guess: the tea plant adapted extremely well to local conditions and slowly, as new tea farms and processing facilities  were being established, it grew to be today's  most famous export of Sri Lanka, with a production that is now in the region of 300,000 metric Tons per year.

A tea picker. Tea harvest is labour intensive, since only some leaves are picked. Nowadays the process has been mechanised though, but I admit that for the production of certain types of teas hand picking is still the norm. 

Stamps:

- Quoting directly from Wikipedia: "The Kandy Esala Perahera (the Sri Dalada Perahara procession of Kandy) also known as The Festival of the Tooth is a festival held in July and August in Kandy, Sri Lanka. This historical procession is held annually to pay homage to the Sacred Tooth Relic of Buddha housed at the Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy"

On 25JUL2020, Sri Lanka Post issued a three stamp set (10;15;15 Rupees) dedicated to the festival, the stamps being illustrated with photographs of key moments of the festival. As common with Sri Lankan  commemorative issues, the stamps were also issued in one stamp souvenir sheets format, such as  the case of the 15 rupee stamp on the postcard, which carries the explanatory legend "The tusker carrying the casket entering through t he Mahawahlkada".

- World Post Day is celebrated each year on  the 9th October, with some postal administrations issuing commemorative stamps.

The 50 Rupee stamp is the 2022 Sri Lankan issue of a common design stamp which was issued by at least 13 countries, namely Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, Egypt, Fiji, Russia, Serbia, Sri Lanka, , Syria, Thailand, Tunisia and Turkey.

- Sri Lanka's National Hospital was inaugurated in 1864. At the time it had a 200 bed capacity, installed in 21 wards.

Being the main hospital in the country, over the years it was expanded and, at present, this public health facility is equipped with  18 intensive care units, 21 operating theatres and 3,404 beds. It has a total staff of  7,500 professionals, 1,500 of which are doctors.

The 10 rupee stamp commemorative of the National Hospital 150th anniversary was issued on 20MAR2015.

The tea plantation of Gorreana, island of S. Miguel, Azores.

I have never been to Sri Lanka, BUT, I have been to what I believe is the only tea farm in Europe, and I'm sure this one would make Catarina de Bragança very happy, since the tea therein produced is top quality: Gorreana, in S. Miguel Island, Azores. If ever you go there, take the time to visit the farm and enjoy a free cup of the great tea varieties they produce there since 1883.