The Best Hotels Near Goatfell - Nuwara Eliya, by the Record
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A four-bedroom colonial bungalow sitting at 2,000 meters on a working tea estate, with Hill Country rolling in every direction. Antiques and designer pieces share space with overhead fans and hot-water bottles for cool nights, and everything, meals, drinks from the honesty bar, afternoon tea, is included. The forest-green dining room does hoppers at breakfast and rice and curry at dinner. The unheated infinity pool stares down the valley, and the fireplace library handles the rest.
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One of Sri Lanka's last wooden shingle roofs caps this tea planter's bungalow near Kandy, a five-room colonial retreat on a working hillside estate. A Mirror Wall inside holds the signatures of governors and planters past, the antique billiard table is genuinely antique, and a heated infinity pool looks out over the Kotmale reservoir and the kind of misty hills that make a tea plantation feel inevitable rather than picturesque.
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A robin's-egg-blue vintage Land Rover collects guests from the rail station, which tells you everything about the register this colonial-style estate has chosen. Set in Sri Lanka's misty hill country among tea plantations, the bungalows have verandas, columns, heavy wooden furniture, and tiled bathrooms built for long soaks. Tea, naturally, is always within reach. Hiking, cycling, or a safari-style tour fill the days. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.
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Five rooms on a working tea plantation above Castlereagh Lake, five hours east of Colombo, with wooden floors, beamed ceilings, and open fireplaces in a colonial-era bungalow. The infinity pool faces the plantation and the water; an ambalama provides shade alongside it. Rates cover everything from breakfast through dinner to drinks on demand, and the butlers arrange leopard-tracking when the tea views stop being enough. No televisions, and Horton Plains cloud forest is close by.
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A two-centuries-old manor house in Sri Lanka's hill country, this nine-room boutique hotel trades televisions for four-poster beds, claw-foot tubs, and a veranda with jungle views. The interiors mix antique furniture with modern fixtures, and the kitchen pulls daily from Kandy's market for upscale traditional Sri Lankan cooking. Without a TV to retreat to, guests tend to discover the courtyard, the pool, and eventually the Temple of the Tooth down the road.
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Before becoming a boutique hotel, this hillside property in Aniwatte housed visiting cricket teams on tour, which remains one of the better origin stories in Sri Lankan hospitality. Nine rooms across three pavilions feature teak interiors and antique pieces, with a batik hanging by Ena de Silva welcoming you at the door. The infinity pool looks out over the Knuckles mountain range, and the restaurant below it shares the same view.