More tea vicar?

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After a brief stop in Kandy we were collected by our tour guide, Kamal. We had been planning on doing the whole trip by ourselves, but when we saw how long it would take to get around by public transport we decided to sign up with a guide. We wouldn't usually trust people who reckoned they could show you the country on a shoe-string but he had an honest face and turned out to be a real find! First stop on the road was the Pinnawalla Elephant Sanctuary. Elephants still live wild in Sri Lanka and sometimes fall foul of humans. Any orphans or sick adults found by the rangers are brought here where they have all the leaves they can eat and a twice daily romp in the river. Some even had their own personal butlers to scrub behind the ears!

After a packed day of elephants, spices and white water rafting we eventually arrived at the village of Hatton - the start of the pilgrimage to Adam's Peak (or Sri Pada if you are Buddhist or Shiva padam if you are Hindu. Who says religions can't share?!). It rises 2243 metres above sea level and can be climbed by 5200 steps. The slightly foolish (i.e. us!) can rise at 2.30am to climb to the top and wait for sunrise. We actually arrived an hour before the sun was due to come up and huddled for a while in a small room crammed full of guides making hot, sweet tea and other intrepid trekkers that had mis-calculated how long it would take them to the top. The sun finally rose and although there was a lot of cloud, the view was breathtaking.

Back down for breakfast and a drive through the tea plantations that made Sri Lanka famous - to the point where exported tea is still known as 'Ceylon tea' even though the country has not been known by this name since 1972. We visited a tea factory and saw more tea plants than you could shake a stick at. By 9.30 we had been up for 19 hours and Ju could barely keep a civil tongue in her head! Boy did we sleep well that night...!