NUWARA ELIYA: In the mist-draped mountains of Sri Lanka’s tea country, rescuers were still plucking bodies from the reddish-brown mud on Tuesday after last week’s cyclone, the island’s worst natural disaster in decades.

At least 465 people were killed, according to disaster officials, with another 366 missing.

Sri Lanka’s Air Force has been combing the landslide-struck landscape, surveying the damage and ferrying food and other essential supplies to marooned residents. Tho­ugh the rain has stop­ped, recovery has just begun.

As the first journalist for foreign media to join a relief mission over the tea-growing region, photographer Ishara Kodikara saw a swathe of the country destroyed after slips of soil flattened everything in their paths, including roads and the vehicles that were on them.

The roof of some houses peaked through the mud, while the rest of the buildings were swallowed by the torrents of soil unleashed by Cyclone Ditwah.

Jagged tears in the mountainsides revealed churned-up expanses of earth, with a few patches of the lush vegetation still clinging nearby in stark contrast. There was no sign of human life in the wrecked landscape.

In the central Welimada area, now inaccessible to heavy vehicles, rescue workers pulled 11 bodies from the mud on Monday and appealed for help to search for dozens more.

In some places, entire slopes have been sheared away, leaving ochre wounds slicing through the dense plantation greenery.

The full extent of the damage to tea plantations, factories and tea pickers is not yet clear, but local media reported the industry has been hard hit. What were once thick, unbroken canopies of tea are now wide channels of mud and debris.

Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2025