All around the Bogawantalawa valley (easy to cut and paste, harder to say!) are signs pronouncing this as Ceylon's Golden Tea Valley, and proclaiming that this is "Arguably the best tea in the world". I couldn't argue with that, not being a connoisseur of tea myself. I will agree that it is very good tea - and today we're on a short trip to see how it gets from field to cup. We woke at 6 - well, I did. Roy was actually wakened at 5 by Buddhist chanting from a nearby temple - it is played on a tape and the same chant loops over and over for about 45 minutes or so. Didn't wake me though. We'd odered "bed tea" for 7am and it arrived promptly. I wasn't sure if we were supposed to ... read more

We were up at 6.25am to pack and get ready to leave Vil Uyana. We went straignt after breakfast, at 8am. It is a 2 and a half hour drive to our hotel outside Kandy city - Kandy House. En route we see spice farms, pepper creepers, rose apple trees and many villages and towns. The main town we pass through is Matale which is very busy indeed. I resisted the offer to stop at a spice farm, although I was tempted. The plan was to get to Kandy House and have some time here before our tour of the city later on today. Kandy House is lovely - it is an old Walluwa and has been beautifully restored. We dumped our bags, drank our welcome drink of passion fruit juice and headed straight to the ... read more

So this morning we got up at 6am as we were headed for Sigiriya Rock Fortress. This involves climbing up a lot of steps (reports vary, some say 750, others say 1200) and so Seelan decided it would be a good idea to be there when the gates open at 7 - the idea being we'd get the climb out of the way before it got too hot. It was pleasant driving through villages before 7 and seeing schoolkids all up and on their way to school - all in their smart white and blue uniforms. I'd been dreading the rock climb - I'm unfit and I knew it would be tough. It was as hard as I expected. It's a 200m climb but steps all the way up - slopes I can cope with, but ... read more

Trouble free journey to Manchester. Arrived and got through security ridiculously early. Shops, coffee, boarded. Emirates seem back to their best - in flight entertainment was excellent. Watched comedies and documentaries and did not sleep. The time passed very quickly during our plane change in Dubai - as we flew in we saw the "tallest building in the world" that they're putting up there. It is phenomenally tall! Really looks quite silly towering so far over the existing skyscrapers. It seemed no time between immigration and boarding our flight to Colombo. Mind you, we did spend ages in the shop buying binoculars as I'd forgotten to pack ours. They seemed like good value but I have to say that we were generally shocked at the prices in Dubai duty free. Last time we were through there ... read more