Well, it’s almost over!

We were picked up this morning from Galle and driven to Colombo. This entailed driving up the motorway - a first for us as we had only briefly tried out dual carriageways previously.

It’s a proper motorway (toll) built by the Chinese (who else?) and whisked us with almost no traffic to within 20km of Colombo. Then we came off and went through the suburbs for a guided tour. Thankfully, this was in the car as the distances are quite big and the temperature was up in the 30s with 70% humidity! So we saw all the sights from air conditioned comfort - hence no pics!

Having finished at around 1.30pm, we then hit the school traffic and everywhere ground to a halt. Having done a U turn, our driver chose a different direction and, having endured the hassle of negotiating a number of police controlled junctions, we ground to a stop on a dual carraiageway with central barriers preventing another U turn. After half an hour of moving no more than a couple of yards, we came to the junction where we found the main road north (inc to the airport) was closed? Driver, who was born in Colombo then headed back towards the City (!) before turning off and taking us through sinuous roads through never ending suburbs. But at least we were moving - and sometimes in the right direction!

Finally we hit the motorway north and within half an hour were at our hotel (The Walawwaa) where we stayed on our first night. A tranquil spot and a 20 minute run the the airport tomorrow.

Keep an eye open for my ‘Disconnected Jottings) blog which I shall probably write on the plane to ease the boredom of an 11 hour daytime flight! So, you’ll be pleased to know (if I’ve managed to keep your attention this long) that it will soon be over and life will be back to normal! ‘Phew’ I hear you all say!

ADO/LMA xx