Weekend Escape

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So now for my weekend away. Well what can I say except WOW, I never realised how beautiful and historical Sri Lanka was.

As I said before we went to visit some of the sights on the Cultural Triangle, we left Friday afternoon and drove for about 5 hours on the worst roads in history until we reached our overnight stop, a really nice little hotel with lovely food and no bugs…..

The drivers out here are awful; they seem to think that the line down the centre of the road is a third lane which makes for some pretty hair raising overtaking I can tell you.

Before it got dark we drove through the Appura Jungle (not sure of spelling) and saw elephants walking along the road, in Sri Lanka farmers use them to carry heavy loads so although they weren’t wild it was still an amazing sight. The Appura Jungle is not a very safe place at night because it’s a popular haunt for Tamil Tigers and no wonder as most of the land is taken up by huge army bases, the Engineers, Royal Artillery and the Infantry, so they are obviously the targets. There are a lot of army check points along the road which is really long, but we had an ‘i - to - i volunteer’ sign in the front of the van and we were waved through every time. I know that might sound a bit scary but you actually feel really safe out here because the army and police are so vigilant and we have even seen a number of ‘UN’ vehicles driving about so it’s not a problem.

The next day, after a night in pure luxury, (well for us anyway) we headed further south to Sigiriya the most amazing complex of palace buildings. Perched on the top of a formidable outcrop of rocks the Winter Palace once stood 600ft above the jungle, the only way up to it then, as now, was by climbing over 2000 steps. Below on the ground was the Summer Palace with formal gardens and swimming pools but when the rains came the household would climb to the top of Sigiriya (meaning ‘Lion Rock) and remain there until the rains stopped. The Winter Palace was just as beautiful with its own gardens and palace buildings and yes I did make it to the top and have the photos to prove it lol. Although I will admit it almost killed me getting there, but in the end I was determined that the steps and heat were not going to beat me lol.

The journey down was much less painful hahahahaha.

We continued our journey to Polonnaruwa, a whole complex of palaces, stupas and other temples. It took over 3 hours to tour the main site and we had to be driven to most of it, it is vast and archaeologists are still working on it to discover what other mysteries it hides. We did however see a cobra nest, which was quite fascinating really, it appears that they invade termite mounds and move in, you only know that it belongs to a cobra because of the big entrance holes lol.

The following day we went to Akura to se Sri Lanka’s tallest Buddha, it is about 1500 years old and really was an amazing sight after a brief stop there we drove back north towards Dambulla, home of the Golden Temple, a complex of caves which were used by monks’ centuries ago. Again more steps (if the bugs and germs don’t get me the steps will hahahahaha) but it was worth it, not only were the views breathtaking but the statues were pretty amazing to.

Then it was a long drive back to Colombo bumping up and down in the back of the van with a few near misses as well.

We are away again this weekend, we leave Saturday morning for Adam’s Peak but first we are going white water rafting. Not sure if I will even attempt Adams Peak, it has approximately 4000 steps to the top, there’s nothing there just the view and we are planning to see the sunrise, but I’ll see how it goes I don’t want to kill myself lol.

Well I think that’s all for now, I’ll try and update it earlier next week so that you can read it in chunks. Keep the emails and texts coming they’re great and make me smile; I don’t feel quite that far away from you all.

Lots of love

Babe xxxxxxxx

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Comments

[bryony and donna]

to our dearest fanny fart!
we have read your journal and found it very boring... only jokin it was alright! hehehehe. we are sending you a parcel saturday 3rd, with all kinds of crap in it! o and harri bo ooh lol i thought you wanted to loose weight? well i (bryony) think that you should wait so that i still will be the skinny one in the family!!!!!!!!!! now that ol farty pants has gone mum and sam thought you were looking real good and that you looked like you had lost weight. anyway heres looking at you kid love us all xxxxx