Saturday 11 September

Hi all

I/we have been having a well-earned rest at a little beach resort we found down south near Galle. Whoever you are, you wouldn't like it.

First, though, a few obligatory farewell drinks at the Cinnamon.

Cheers (again)

Spot H being busy elsewhere

Then, the lovely Ranga drove us to Welligama Beach and our hotel.

Mrs J and handsome Sri Lankan

When we arrived, Mrs J fell in love with the in-house wildlife which was wandering around reception. Aren't I enough? 

Spot the kitten

Here's a couple of views of the resort.

That's our chalet on the right

Fishing boats on their way out - fabulous beach

Mrs J having a drink in nearby Galle

Like I said, you wouldn't like it here. Particularly if your name is Pol and you should have been here in the first place!

On Monday it's off to Colombo and another night slumming it at the Cinnamon Grand, then on to Singapore for what J calls 'some work'. Yeah, a likely story. Then back to the homeland.

So this story ends here. Hope you've enjoyed it. I'll be back soon - you lucky, lucky people.

Chin chin

Oliver the Bear

Tuesday 7 September Revised

Yo

The final day. An idea of J's last October has not only come to pass but has been completed. We'll forgive him a teeny bit of smugness. If only it were teeny!

The plan today is to go to a local school and then to Colombo, gather, and then drive in convoy to the finishing point, the Cinnamon Grand Hotel.

It was a loooong drive downhill from the hotel, so N took the wheel.

Last day start

At the school we all helped plant some trees to make up for our carbon emissions during the challenge. I told you these Large Minority people are sickeningly good about about this sort of thing. But the morning was charming. It was the first day of term and all the school lined up to greet us with lots of hand-shaking and ayuboyans.

Waiting for us/me

There was even a school orchestra.

H signed them up

First, we all sat in the classroom whilst there were speeches and singing of the national anthem.

Centre of picture?

Then we went out with the children to plant trees. This was hard work for me so I muscled my way, exhausted though I was, into some of the piccies.

The real workers

Some shared glory

A sea of planting

Some of the girls spotted a rock star.

Another autograph?

And then we were ready for the off. Our tuk-tuks waited patiently for us

Talking about their drivers?

And off we went.

It was just over 100km to Colombo. Mercifully on main road - no off-roading today - and gathering to prepare ourselves for the final parade. We tarted up our tuk-tuk.

Starring you-know-who on the front with balloon

Our driving team - one of them stealing my glory - typical

Then it was down the esplanade to the Cinnamon Grand.

Lots of cheering and waving. We must have made quite a sight. Twenty-eight tuk-tuks being driven by foreigners through the middle of  Colombo.

Here we come

And here we four are

WE'D MADE IT!

There were jubilations and much picture-taking at the finishing post.

All the drivers, Julian, Robyn and Juan at the front, J & N back right

And, for any unbelievers out there, here are piccies of the milometer at the beginning and end of the challenge.

Start at 14185

Finish at 15474

One thousand, five hundred and sixty kilometers. A small ripple for the chaps, please.

There was general revellry and prize-giving in the evening. H fitted in well.

Mine's a small lemonade

J & N didn't look too out of their comfort zone, either.

The brothers Smug

My boys came fourteenth out of twenty-eight (in the top half, at least) but DID win the prize for the most money raised for charity - for which we would like to thank you all.

It was quite a experience. We saw evidence of the tsunami of six years ago and the constant presence of troops in the north-east reminded us how recently the civil war had ended. Sri Lanka is a beautiful country with lovely, smiling and generous people.

A HUGE thank you to the organisers, Julian, Juan and Robyn, and their back-up team, for all their hard work and creativity.

J, Mrs J and I are going to the South Coast for a few days R&R. Don't worry, I'll be writing about it so you won't all have withdrawal symptoms; H & N are getting back to reality in Colombo for a day and then heading back to Blighty on Thursday. Get the winter clothes out, chaps.

To those of you who have been, thanks for reading about our experience and, again, thank you to our donors. You'll make a huge difference to the lives of some lovely Sri Lankan children.

Talk soon

OLIVER THE BEAR

Monday 6 September

The morning dawned at Kandy. At least for some it did. Most of the tuk-tuk teams actually saw it around mid-day and through very bleary eyes. My lot certainly did. Nothing to do with being in the hotel disco until 3am, of course, more the strain of all that driving, poor dears.

When I woke, though, I discovered we nearly had visitors. I looked out of the window onto our balcony, and what did I see?

Early morning visitor

There was a family of them obviously trying to get into any room with the doors open. No match for a smart bear, though.

Lots of sitting around the pool trying not to talk or do anything that was noisy or required speech. Recovery was slow and required copious fresh lime juice ( and you have to be in Sri Lanka to know how good fresh lime juice can be) and half-hearted attempts to eat. The whole day only brightened up when a trip to a jeweler who J knows was arranged. Quite a bit of self-indulgence took place (the Khan clan) and some generous gift-buying was in evidence (Khan clan & N).

It was a quiet evening. Surprise. With some fairly early-to-bed activity. But the Amaya Hills is a sooper hotel. Go there.

Finally, a view from the balcony overlooking the pool and the city. Great place. (Especially if you're not hungover and can actually raise yourself to go visit the fabulous Temple of the Tooth and look around the old capital of Sri Lanka.)

View over Kandy from the hotel

Tomorrow, Tuesday, we have our triumphal drive to the capital, Colombo, and the announcements of the various winners. We hope to carry off the prize for the 'most money raised for charity' so that we'll come home with something. (Did I tell you that J found out that he's not the oldest competitor? By three months! He's spitting about it. Ho, ho, ho.)

Nearly there.

Big O

Sunday 5 September

Greetings and bear hugs.

Today was tea day. Being in the centre of Sri Lanka's tea industry it was strangely appropriate. As to the route, first we climbed to one of the highest points on the island then downhill to Kandy, the old capital.

Ready for the off

En route we had to persuade some tea factory workers to give us samples which we were NOT allowed to purchase, and we had to find our way to a tea factory in the very back of the back of beyond in order to have a tea-tasting session and answer some questions on the differences between BOP, FBOP and OP teas. Go Google it, my guys have already forgotten.

Tea samples about to be handed over

Getting from the main road to the tea factory involved one of the longest and roughest off-roads of the challenge. J did NOT drive. Let's leave it at that. Some spectacular scenery and, of course, constant waving from the children as we weaved, bumped and jumped our way around the backroads.

Finally, into Kandy, the home of the Temple of the Tooth. This is Buddha's tooth, not a palace glorifying dentists. Here, we had to find a particular merchant in the fruit and veg market, which covers three chaotic floors, and get our final task from him.

J at Kandy market

The task was to was buy 400 rupees of vegetables (£2.40) then, wait for it, get on a local bus and sell the produce to the passengers - at a profit. This sounded so much fun that, naturally, that our senior heroes dug their heels in and decided to go straight to the hotel. Wimps.

Lurvely hotel. Amaya Hills, overlooking Kandy. I immediately made myself comfy and left them to get on with whatever - which would probably involve beer and/or G&Ts.

Me settling in

And did it ever. Not only were G&Ts apparently obligatory, so was going to the hotel disco until some appalling hour of the morning and then coming in and waking me up. Thanks, guys. (J & N blamed H.)

One more thing for Khan, Jenny et al's friends. They want to show you how hard they are working. So here's four of them arriving at the hotel.

.
And here's the six of them striking unusual poses.

Tomorrow, a rest day. Rest? It's time all of them did some work, believe a bear. Tuesday we drive to Colombo arriving in, we hope, fine convoy style at the hotel.

Must go to bed now.

O

Saturday 4 September

A celebration day!

Today we hit our £3,500 Just Giving target and with the pledges we have we should get to £4,000 with ease. A BIG thank you to all our donors from the children of Sri Lanka. As an example of how far your money can go, we have raised enough to pay for a teacher for over four years. J, N & H are very proud of you all.

Now, back to business.

This was the day everyone had been so looking forward to. Taking our tuk-tuks high into the hills to the tea country on steep and winding roads. With the inevitable badly signposted roadworks.

The day started with the challenge of finding our instructions for the day. Again, we had to go well off the main road to another amazing Buddhist carving. This one was cut into the rock-face, the rock itself being an outline of an elephant.

Not long after getting back on the road we had a bit of a 'domestic'. J had overstayed his welcome at the controls, in contravention of his and N's agreement, and had started driving over particularly rough and uneven surfaces (he's very good on flat straight surfaces); H looked like he might have a knipperty fit if he had to put up with that quality driving for  much longer; N (with four hundred or something years of driving motorbikes behind him) got somewhat annoyed with J and said so in no uncertain terms. Words were spoken ( I was in by bag having a kip, so can't report juicy details) and N moved into the driving seat. H visibly relaxed. The general mood in the tuk-tuk wasn't that great for the rest of the journey.

It's only the naked, unvarnished and brutal truth in this blog, believe a bear.

Some stunning views as we got higher and higher. At  the end of the day we're not much short of 2,000 metres high and that's a lot of bears, believe me.

Just before getting to the tea capital of Sri Lanka, Nuwara Eliya (pronounced New-ralia), we had a final challenge. Again, miles off-road to a campsite  where we had to make up a copy of the Sri Lankan flag using only leaves, bark etc found on the forest floor. Rather creative, really. The idea - not my three.

Tomorrow it's downhill all the way - to Kandy. My little joke. And then a day's break before the parade into Colombo. (And J's lady flys in at 1.30am Sunday morning. So that's nice.)

More from the drama queens tomorrow.

But, again, thank you all.

Big O

Friday 3 September

I've just had as wonderful day as a bear could wish for.

We left the Tristar as soon as we could and headed north and then west to our second camping site.

En route we called in at a school to deliver some English dictionaries which the challenge organisers were donating to the school. (They're a bit good at things like this - sickening, really.) Although term hadn't started, the children all came in to greet us and looked very smart in their uniforms.

As each tuk-tuk team came into the classroom with a dictionry all the children stood and gave us a formal 'Ayoboyan' greeting with hands held together as if in prayer.

At this point J, who very occassionally gets things right, brought me in from my seat in the tuk-tuk and introduced me to the children - who all stood and gave me an 'Ayoboyan'! Then I spotted the new love of my life on the front row and had my picture taken on her lap. Bliss it was to be alive that day. And I don't even know her name!

Then it was back on the road. We did about 180 km in total, mostly over reasonable roads (the organisers obviously got some thing wrong there). The challenge of the day was to go off the main drag and find a badly sign-posted buddhist shrine. Here we saw two magnificent statues and had to answer questions about their age (7th Century), hieght (38 ft) and branch of Buddhism (Mayan).

Then off to the campsite, which involved passing through Yala National Park, the largest in Sri Lanka, where we saw a wild elephant eating at the raodside. We didn't stop too long - you don't.

The campsite was way in the countryside and not completely impossible to find. Although a couple of teams who'd had tuk-tuk problems arrived after dark. ( Their friends and families might like to know that one of them was Khan & Jenny.)

The local people cooked us delicious food, but the highlight was the chili-eating contest. Each entrant had to chew a portion of chili paste for a minute and not change expression. After about twenty minutes of this (around six portions by then) the quantity was increased to a teaspoonful. At which point H gracefully retired. Horrifyingly, this went on for what must have been seven spoonfulls until a draw was called as the audience was suffering more than the finalists - one Sri Lankan, one Sicilian and one half-Tunisian Brit.

Then off to loitering within tent (ho, ho, ho)

Thursday 2 September

Hi all

Not much to reprt about Thursday. We all spent the day on or around the beach at Arugumbay. This fabulous beach is on the lower SE coast of AriLanka and is famed for the wonderful surfing. In fact, the Sri Lanka surfing championships are held here.

The team had a tough time dealing with it..

H

The downside, and isn't there always one, was the hotel. As the beach is haunted by penniiless surfers, there is limited demand for decent hotels of a decent size. We were billeted in the Hotel Tristar and all  can say is, don't get yourself in the same position. Poor rooms, poor service, poor us. And, to rub salt in the wound, they weren't serving alcohol as the hotel is owned by a devout Muslim who was observing Ramadan! You could bring in your own booze, but finding little local bar became the main sport.  Typical.

I had to interrupt my blogging to take the picture as well1! They said something about earning my keep - huh

Lovely scene over the beach in the morning, though.

 Now to get some sun.

O