It's been one HECK of a weekend!
Alex came to meet me in Bandarawela on Friday, and we travelled to Ohiya, which is in the Horton Plains national park. We travelled by train, which was like a very old fashioned steam train! It was awesome!! The doors are always open, so we experienced hanging out of the doors (heeeehehehe!) As we neared Ohiya, we were surrounded by white mist...there were mountains and towns beyond, but you literally could not see a single thing, except....white! You'd have to see it for real to understand!
Upon arrival, we found a lodge to stay in and have dinner. We met two older couples at the lodge from Canada and Belgium, and decided to travel to and around the national park together the next day. As the park is so huge, and mist descends at around midday, this meant a very early start!
We got up at 4am to get a tuk-tuk to the national park, where we walked for a while, looking at beautiful scenery and trees. We reached the 'World's End' which was a cliff face...you stand on the edge, and there is a 1000 metre drop. We decided to have breakfast while sitting there, looking out at the gorgeous mountains! We then went to baker falls, which is a beautiful waterfall, before heading back to our lodge. On the walk back, the mist had started descending, so it was getting very white!
After a quick cup of tea, Alex and I took a train to Hatton, then a bus to
Dalhousie, where we had dinner and found another lodge, and had half an hours kip before waking up at 1:30am to climb ADAM'S PEAK, a 2200 foot high mountain. From the village, we could see all the lights on Adams peak, it was surreal!
The walk up was very strenuous. Adams Peak is not your typical mountain, it is just steps most of the way up - 5900 of them! Luckily there were shops etc scattered around on the way up, so we could stop if we got tired! (Bear in mind, we had not slept since 4:30am the previous morning!) so, we spent all night climbing the mountain. As we neared the top though, there was a kilometre long queue to get to the peak. This took a loooong time! We saw the sunrise from here. We eventually got to the top, boy was the hard climb worth it! We could see all around Sri Lanka! There were bells up there that people rang once for each successful ascent. I rang a bell once of course, but the most i heard someone ring was 32 times. Blimey!
We then began the loooong descent. I thought it would be easy, but as some of the steps were really steep, it was fairly difficult! At one point, my legs started shaking like crazy, so we stopped and had a drink, so I could get some sugar in me! As we reached the bottom, it started PELTING it down with rain (thank goodness the rain didn't start 2 hours earlier!). If you visit Sri Lanka, I recommend doing this-it is long and very difficult but totally worth it!
We then took a bus to Hatton, where I made a MAD dash to the train station in the pelting rain to catch a train back to bandarawela. At this point I had been awake for 36 hours! Nice guys in the train shop gave me a free coffee, so that woke me up a bit!
I got home, had some dinner and went to bed after being awake for 42 hours.
Wheeeeew!! Xxxxx