Set within the tea highlands of Ragala, Stafford Bungalow has long believed that meaningful travel leaves something behind. On the 13th of March 2025, seventeen cyclists from North Germany proved what that can look like.
Ragala, Nuwara Eliya District, Sri Lanka March 2025 | Updated June 2026 6 min read
Few places in Sri Lanka carry the quiet weight of the hill country’s plantation villages. Ragala — a small community tucked between tea fields and montane forest just outside Nuwara Eliya — is one of them. The people who live here have tended these estates for generations. Until recently, their youngest children had no preschool to call their own.
That changed on the 13th of March 2025, with the inauguration of the Ragala High Forest Preschool — the first of its kind in Sri Lanka’s plantation hill country, and the result of a six-year international partnership between Four Tours cycling community and Fly & Help Germany.
The children of Ragala received more than a school — they received a beginning.
The 17 visitors who arrived at Stafford Bungalow that morning were not typical tourists. As members of Four Tours — a cycling community based in North Germany — they had spent years contributing to school-building projects around the world alongside Fly & Help Germany, a nonprofit with a track record of bringing education infrastructure to underserved communities across multiple continents.
Sri Lanka’s plantation belt was a natural fit for this work. Despite being home to tens of thousands of families, the tea estate communities of the Nuwara Eliya district have historically had limited access to early childhood education — a gap with long-term consequences for social mobility, language development, and community health.
The Ragala High Forest Preschool is designed to change that — and to serve as a model for what is possible across the highlands.
Partnership begins
Four Tours and Fly & Help Germany identify Ragala’s plantation communities as a priority for educational investment.
Six years of development
Fundraising, community consultation, site selection, and construction unfold across multiple visits to Sri Lanka’s hill country.
13 March 2025 — Inauguration
The Ragala High Forest Preschool officially opens — the first preschool of its kind in Sri Lanka’s plantation belt.
Stafford Bungalow hosts the group
Following the inauguration, the 17-strong Four Tours group gathers for lunch at Stafford Bungalow, overlooking the rolling tea plantations of Nuwara Eliya.
After the inauguration, Stafford Bungalow had the privilege of hosting the Four Tours group for lunch — a moment to pause, reflect, and take in the landscape that had been at the heart of this entire endeavour. Seated above the rolling tea fields, with the mist moving through the valley below, it felt like the right place to mark what had just been achieved.
For Stafford Bungalow, this visit was a reminder of what hospitality in a working estate community can and should be: not simply a retreat from the world, but a point of connection with it.
At Stafford Bungalow, sustainability is not a branding exercise. It is the shape of daily life on a working highland estate. That means pesticide-free grounds, a bee conservation programme protecting native Apis cerana colonies, replanted bee-friendly gardens using endemic highland species — and an ongoing commitment to the families whose labour and knowledge sustain this landscape.
The Ragala High Forest Preschool is the most visible expression of that commitment so far. But it is not the last. This initiative marks the beginning of a broader vision: to expand access to education across Sri Lanka’s hill country communities, ensuring that the next generation of the plantation belt has the foundation it deserves.
Ragala High Forest Preschool — key factsFirst preschool of its kind in Sri Lanka’s plantation hill country · Six-year international partnership between Four Tours and Fly & Help Germany · Located in Ragala, Nuwara Eliya District · A model for future schools across the highlands
