Haputale is a ridgetop town that sits on the southern edge of the highland plateau – a narrow settlement balancing between two dramatically different landscapes, with the flat southern plains stretching to the coast on one side and the tea-covered slopes of the highlands rising on the other. Lipton’s Seat, the viewpoint above the town from which Sir Thomas Lipton reportedly surveyed his tea empire, is one of the finest panoramas in Sri Lanka on a clear morning. Haputale is smaller and quieter than Ella or Nuwara Eliya, and it attracts the kind of traveller who prefers that.