Tea pickers at work.[Photo provided by Malaka Rodrigo]

Sri Lanka has a crop that is essential to its economy, but those who pick it do so in extremely tough conditions

Wherever you go in Sri Lanka, coconuts seem to be ever present, but they are not the country's most lucrative crop; that crown belongs to tea.

I came to this realization as a bus took me and other reporters on a United Nations-organized trip deeper and deeper into the country's mountainous central highlands.

Traveling all the way from the northwestern coast, we had for hours entertained ourselves with the monotonous view of coconut trees - a seemingly endless parade that led one to believe that the country lived on this plant. (In a sense this is true if you have tasted enough of the coconut milk-infused local cuisine.)

Occasionally we would also pass by salt factories, paddy fields, humble village houses and grazing cows that often had egrets as their companions and never bothered with an outsider. When we were on the highway, a Sri Lankan reporter told me that a few years back the roads were punctuated by checkpoints as a result of the country's 26-year civil war that ended in 2009.

Then we went into some colorful and chaotic town center, where a truckload of people whooping passed by. They were heading for work at the tea plantations, I was told.

For the next two days I visited Ratnapura and Mattakale, where the view of the misty, terraced tea fields is stunning for someone from China, the tea country. Because of history and geography, most of the tea farms in China are small to medium-sized, with green tea being the major produce. In Sri Lanka it is black tea that holds sway, mostly grown on big plantations that, with most of the workers living on the ground, constitute mini-universes of their own. Ceylon tea, a much-prized form of black tea, is Sri Lanka's most famous export.