I was in India one minute and an hour later on the ground in Sri Lanka. Such is the speed of moving about. It was faster than going into the city by train at home.

The route around Sri Lanka.

A smiling driver was waiting at the airport. Kylie had flown in a few days earlier and she and the driver were keen to head up country, to Habarane, elephant country. We visit the local relics at Polonnaruwa on creaky old push bikes. We drive out to a local river village where we are paddled across a narrow river by an elder to meet the locals. They are growing everything and using basic implements to cook it all in a mud hut whose walls are stained with smoke from kerosine lamps. Their deft use of tools is impressive, they husk a coconut and rasp the coconut flesh into a bowl in less time than it would take me to get the magimix out of the cupboard.
I found myself on my third safari in three weeks but I wasn’t complaining. Simply another chance to be bounced around on rutted bumpy tracks, to be covered in splattered insects and charged by an overprotective female elephant. I felt quite privileged to be watching great herds of elephants quietly tearing great clumps of grass from the vast plains in a never-ending feeding frenzy. Occasionally they would tap a grassy clump onto their raised foot shedding unwanted soil before lifting it into their open twenty-four hour mouths.

 

 

Another day another adventure.  The trip is taking on a physical theme that I had not expected. We drive towards Kitalgulah on a road that only gets bumpier, we are high up in the mountains now next to the river Keilani. Too many hours in the van, time to stretch the legs but white water rafting ? Should have read my itinerary more carefully considering I had agreed and paid for it. A life-vest is strapped around me, jerked tight. Tight enough to know it’s not just for show then we are both pointed down a steep narrow cliff track to the roaring river below. The rafting office sends our rubber raft suspended precariously on a thick cable. We watch as it glides high above the trees and scrub like an oversized pelican right where we are standing waiting at the river edge. Two skinny local boys appear from nowhere and gesture for us to step in. What follows is five minutes of fundamental paddling and survival instruction. “Ok ?” asks the older guide, he pushes off before either of us can answer.

Far too quickly we are being bucked and jostled like first time rodeo riders, I’ve forgotten how brutally unforgiving water can be. The second set of rapids finds Kylie being tossed like a cork out of the raft. The lazy smile disappears instantly from our two guides and in seconds they have scrambled like ants across the raft and reach overboard. With an almighty tug they have somehow reefed her back into the boat. They have no time to speak or smile we have reached the next roaring rapid and we need to negotiate the boulders. There is a flurry of oars thrashing into the churning water, a call to relax then tense fingers clinging to the raft’s ropes. It’s not until we reach a calm stretch that they turn and smile, laughing and talking rapidly in their local tongue. For two scrawny boys they found adrenalin energy when they needed to. We swim the last stretch of this dark wild river as the sun starts to go down, it’s blissful. Not for much longer though, currently the Chinese are constructing a massive dam for hydro electricity the river will become a trickle. The riverside villages will be gone in two years so will the rafting business. We wave goodbye in sudden torrential rain but we’re wet already. Asiri, our driver struggles to get the van up the slippery flooded road from the river. It’s on our fourth attempt that he finally gets traction and we lurch back onto the narrow mountain road.

We arrive late at Slightly Chilled hotel perched as you would expect, on the side of a steep mountain. The hotel dining room is full of Europeans enthusiastically shovelling in dinner whilst silently staring out the window at the distant sparsely lit path leading all the way to the top of Adams Peak. Almost straight to bed for us it’s a real early start.
Woke at 2am willing the rain of last night to have disappeared. I’ve obviously been praying to the right god because the sky was full of stars and an enormous super blue moon. Half an hour later we were stumbling along the hotel road with two choices. The European backpackers heading off to claim the summit of Adams Peak and the local pilgrims quietly snaking their way towards the Buddhist shrine at the top of Sri Pada mountain for prayer. Oh that’s right, they are one and the same but the attitude couldn’t be further apart. We creep past tea houses already billowing great clouds of steam and gaudy souvenir shops full of fluorescent cuddly things with absolutely no connection to the spiritual mountain top above.
The first thing that causes concern is the irregularity of the steps, not such an issue for me but Kylie can barely see over and needs to lift her knees to her chin to scrabble up. The steep size means it’s also difficult to get a rhythm up, that plus the thought of clambering up five thousand five hundred of the buggers. It chews at your brain. Around us a mixed bag of young locals skip mindlessly along, older worshippers chug along like those diesel engines that just keep going and the backpackers who have started strong are already slowing and thinking of somewhere more interesting to be.
The first hour slips away and the second hour has some stops. By the third hour there are many stops disguised as admiring the surrounding landscape as night turns to day. At six am and with the first of the sun throwing oranges and reds across the horizon we wheeze our way to the temple gates. The sprightly and true believers have beaten us up to the small monastery. So it’s the stairs for us as chanting rings out into the dawn. We sit and watch the full sunrise whilst contemplating the effect that those five and a half thousand steps will have on our knees going down. It’s slow and steady wins the race, there is a certain satisfaction though in arriving back at our hotel in one piece and before they’ve packed up the breakfast room.

The path to Adams Peak. Somehow every religion believes it to be theirs.

Back in the van to slowly bounce our way to Nuwara Eliya on roads that have equal potholes and bitumen. We are thrown about and sway in unison on the hairpin bends, the valleys are deep and rugged. Sri Lanka is far more mountainous than I had realised.
Tea plantations start to appear clinging precariously to these steep hills and the temperature starts to drop. Finally Nuwara Eliya, a hilltop retreat for the colonial English is laid out in front of us. Old England they called it with a sprinkling of remnants of the British rule. Our hotel is of that era and is both quaint and in desperate need of some twenty-first century power points. It certainly has a retreat feel and we sip drinks in the old dark timber lined bar whilst discussing tomorrow’s elephant shoot. The elephant shoot is canceled due to lack of interest or maybe I missed the early start. Instead we follow a million Chinese tourists each with a selfie stick around Horton Plains to the magnificent vista called Worlds End. The tranquility and beauty are lost on the platform jutting out into the valley maybe it’s the non stop chatter of the Chinese hoards. China’s equivalent of Facebook, RenRen must be in overdrive.