First weekend of travelling

I will try to keep the posts a bit shorter, don't mean to scare anyone off by another mamooth post :)

Adam's Peak was an achievement! It was tough, I'm pretty sure the truth is closer to 5200 steps than 2000 as our driver claimed... Thanks to stretching our legs (quads, hamstrings, calf) a million times, every time we stopped, so yeah, roughly a million times on the way up and down, we were fine after the trip.

There are a lot more shops than I expected and Buddhist monks are scattered around the foot of the mountain too on the way and they collect donations - it's a culture based on donations as I learned. One can buy warm jumpers and fluffy hats as well and Sri Lankans take advantage of this and sport colourful, pink, Santa or Hello Kitty fluffy hats - grown men and everybody, it's quite funny :)
People climb with babies and with old old relatives, I have huge respect for them. I saw a man, roughly 80, with a limp, who was climbing alone, he was my hero because he kept catching up with us, obviously taking no breaks for hours and hours.

On the top, there is a Buddhist temple, rather underwhelming I must say, meaning no disrespect. Those who wanted to go in had to remove shoes and hats so I missed this experience because I was freezing as it was and knew if I take my shoes off, I will simply die of hypothermia, then and there in the Buddhist temple on top of Adam's Peak so I chose life. It was rather cold, due to the altitude, it being 4:30 am when we got there and due to the fact that we were enclosed in a big dark cloud. It occasionally rained but that wasn't the biggest problem...

The biggest problem was that the cloud stayed right where it was all night and all morning and we missed the allegedly glorious sunrise AND view from the top. Disappointed, we climbed down and maybe halfway down we started to see the surrounding mountains, waterfalls, forests and I well believe that a sunrise on the top would make anyone forget about the misery of their climb. We were very proud of our achievement even if there was no reward.

Towards the bottom I felt really hungry so bought tea and a chapatti, which the man generously flavoured up for me: 2 spoons of sugar in a tiny cup of tea and 2 spoons of red hot chili paste on the chapatti. Yep, chili at 9 am and it strangely worked really well! I was going to scrape off the chili because I'm not a big fan of spicy stuff as I'm getting older but I thoroughly enjoyed this unusual breakfast.

I should add here: people always it rice and curry, anywhere, anytime. All food is wrapped in paper and a plastic bag and then they eat with their hand. Curry and rice for breakfast, no bother :)

We headed to Ella afterwards, visiting Rawana Falls which was majestic. The 15-minute bus ride there and back was quite the experience too. In true Sri Lankan style, they will overtake a truck uphills, in a bend, with a BUS. They will beep though, just to be sure to be sure. Part of me wanted to strangle the driver for endangering my dear life, and part of me wanted to shake his hands because we survived and it was pretty impressive.

The train journey back to Kandy was unbelievably beautiful, snaking around mountains and valleys, overlooking villages, tea planatations, forests, peaks and vales - just the most beautiful train journey I will ever have. People have a chat with each other while standing and sitting in the open door of the train, fresh air through our hair, just perfect. Kids are quite happy to practise their English too and are incredibly friendly. Grown women (well, in their 20s) scream in every tunnel, it's very funny :)

I had another great experience, where a family asked if I could help their relative (the brother of the woman who asked) because his arm and leg went numb 2 months ago and he is having difficulty with it. The family was on their way to Colombo and the man is going to see his doctor so he carried all his medical notes and findings and blood results with him. I did a quick assessment and with the medical students our guess was that he had Guillain Barre, although the findings were inconclusive. On the diagnostic card we found that his doctor also thought that it was GBS so we were quite proud of our differential diagnosis. I gave the man advice and some exercises and we were all very happy :)

The train journey took 6 and a half hours but that shouldn't deter anyone from going, it is mesmerisingly beautiful, very interesting to see the villages, towns, people waving to the train and talking with people on the train (and anywhere) is a heartwarming experience.