Blogs from Western Province, Sri Lanka, Asia - page 23

Hello, My third week in Sri Lanka seems to have gone very quickly! Last Sunday we took a long train journey through the beautiful Hill Country, arriving in Bandarawela - 7 hours by train but the fantastic views made it seem shorter. In the evening we went round to the house of a local family (friends of our tour guide) for some traditional Sri Lankan cooking (my contriubtion was chopping a few spring onions!). They gave us tips on managing the traditional eating with our hands (we all went straight back to cutlery the next night!). We then had a fabulous two days walking in the mountains (about 30km split over two days), walking through remote tea plantations and villages. From schoolchildren to tea-pluckers, everyone was posing for photographs and curious to see their digital image ... read more

Spend yesterday in Amman. Done the tourist city tour...culture, shopping and all that in the morning. Afternoon was spent in the bar with some Al-types who were off on a suicide mission to Bagdad. Lovely place apparently! So by the time we had to go to the airport, I was slaughtered on 20$ a can Amstel Lager (paid for by some security firm!). Finally arrived in Negombo half six this morning, sri lankan time, not that that means anything to my brain at the moment. Slept for a few hours and are now chilling in the heat with the biggest worry being where to get mosquito coils. People are well friendly here, and I am sort off disappointed of not being able to pick a fight with any hustler. ... read more

We are just about at the finish line for our South East Asian adventures and it's been a really interesting experience. After the rendezvous in Bangkok with the guys we headed north to Chang Mai. Here we started gathering essentials for our journey to the lands of Europe and christmas gifts for the family seeing as we will be broke when we get home. This town was supposed to be relaxed and chilled out and it was.....until.....some punk ass jacked Russ's camera. Yeah it blew....we had just picked up some laundry and were walking back to our guesthouse, one hand was full of laundry and the other with his camera and planner where he kept all his important things. We were only about 60 ft. from our guesthouse when these two teenage guys pulled up behind ... read more

Sorry. Don't know if I'll get back to cover Jaipur and the India road stories. Computer access is a little harder to come by these days, so I thought I would stay current and fill in the gaps later. I'll leave some stories to tell when we get back. We arrived in Sri Lanka safe and sound. The first full day here we retraced our steps and found Rachel's orphanage. Two of the workers (a nun and a civilian) were there when Rachel was processed through in 1994 (They don't remember her, but they recognize their handwriting on the documents. We stayed for about 90 minutes and toured the facilities. We also visited another Convent in Colombo, this one run by the Sisters of Mother Teresa. Rachel's birth mother had stayed there a while with ... read more

Sri Lanka was a great change from India. The tuk tuk drivers still had the same bloody attitude problems as in india, but the sri lankan people were charming and the change in scenery was well-earned. Adding dave the traveller'' to our equation in kerela, she also graced us with her presence in Sri Lanka. Day one we headed to pinewella, an orphanage for elephants!! Here, in the 40 degree heat, we watched in amazement the eating, cleaning and daily rituals of the orphaned elephants. From here we ventured east to a place in the hills called Kandy. Staying in lovely homestay, we explored Kandy for two days before heading on a religious pilgramage up Adams Peak, a 4000 stepped pilgrim walk just south of kandy. If getting up at 2:30AM (!) was not bad ... read more