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