Ayubowan! (Are you impressed with my newly-expanded Sinhala vocabulary? I mean, "hello", that's advanced stuff. More on which later.) Sorry this installment's been so long coming; decent internet connections have been a bit thin on the ground recently.

Having picked our way along the South coast we next headed for the Hill Country, Sri Lanka's lush, craggy heartland, crisscrossed by perilously narrow mountain roads and dotted with tea plantations. Our first stop was Ella, reputedly Sri Lanka's most beautiful village, which is only about 70 km from Tissa (going by the highly scientific method of measuring the map with my fingers), but the journey took us four hours and three buses. On the final leg our bus ground to an abrupt halt amidst confused shouts and we were asked to go up and identify our luggage - with the end of the civil war still less than a year ago, tight security occasionally rears its head.

Looking back at some of my earlier posts, I don't seem to be very good at conveying how striking, awe-inspiring or otherwise impressive something is - I have a feeling I made the Great Barrier reef sound like a mildly diverting swimming spot, and Ayers Rock seem positively disappointing. Let me say upfront, then, that the Hill Country is beautiful: verdant, varied and dramatic. It's the kind of place where monkeys cross the road in front of you, and you turn a corner only to see the landscape tumbling into the haze below.

Mike communing with nature.

Ella comprises a single street lined with hones, shops and cafes, as well as a handful of guesthouses perched on the slopes above. We stayed at the Rawana Holiday Resort (a name which makes it sound like a faceless, sprawling complex, rather than a family-owned guesthouse with half a dozen rooms), which I chose solely on the reputation of its garlic curry. Ella's meant to be one of the best places in the island to try Sri Lankan home-cooking, and it didn't disappoint - we even got to watch the cook at Rawana prepare the evening meal while he talked us through the various dishes, and he promised to email us the recipes (if you eat round at ours in the next couple of months, prepare to have a plate of curried garlic cloves inflicted on you).

The next morning, in an uncustomary fit of virtue, we decided to climb Little Adam's Peak, a vantage point with great views of Ella Rock, which dominates the local landscape. The path meanders through tea plantations (fresh tea leaves, it transpires, neither look nor smell anything like tea), past a ramshackle tea pickers' village, and round a slightly foreboding-looking green gate, which sparked much bickering over whether the instruction "pass the green gate" meant to go through it or to walk on by it. On the way back down again we were lured into a pretty guesthouse-come-cafe by signs promising passion fruit juice and lemon cake. The owner, an incredibly friendly man, was amused by our stab at a few Sinhala words (unchecked hilarity is a fairly typical reaction), and gave us an impromptu language lesson, with the result that we can now say such useful tings as, "do you have change for 1000 rupees?" and, "no, I absolutely, definitely don't want whatever it is you're trying to sell me, please be so kind as to b*gger off" (that may not be the direct translation, but you get the general idea). We ended up going back to his for dinner, another delicious take on rice and curry which this time included pittu, a coarse, almost couscous-like substance made from grated coconut and rice flour.

Speaking of Sri Lankan specialities, I thought I'd show you a typical breakfast, this particular one also having been eaten in Ella:

From right to left the bowls hold egg curry (soft-boiled eggs crushed into a deliciously savoury curry sauce), coconut sambol and dahl, while on the plate you can see hoppers, string hoppers (the ones that look like discs of noodles) and roti - this roti was exceptionally good; I think it might have had coconut in it.

After a couple of days of happily gorging ourselves thus, we waved goodbye to Ella and set off for a tiny village called Dalhousie. The views from the train were stunning - or at least, they were if you failed to get a seat and spent the four hour trip sitting in the permanently open carriage door (slightly less dangerous than it sounds, as most of the time the train chugs along fairly sedately, regularly outstripped by passing butterflies [I think I've stolen that line from one of the Harry Potter books; oh, the shame]). The route included half a dozen tunnels, and every time we went through one the local children screamed and whooped as if they were on a rollercoaster. (Have I mentioned how endearing most Sr Lankan children are? The little ones shout an enthusiastic "hello!" when we pass them on the street, followed immediately by "bye bye!", while older children stare wide-eyed at us on buses, smiling shyly if we catch their eye.)

About halfway into the trip Mike got talking to a local journalist, and they spent the next couple of hours comparing notes on respective cultures, societies and spice tolerances. Bandara (that being his name) also introduced us to train sacks (Mike's particularly taken with the breads stuffed with spiced potato, which rejoice in the unhelpfully non-descriptive name of "buns") and let us know when our station came up, which was handy as there are no announcements, and Roman alphabet signs are few and far between. By the time we pulled into Hatton Mike had landed himself a commission to write a short article for the Daily News - not bad for someone who's only bought a newspaper once in his life. 

As luck had it, a bus bound for Dalhousie met the incoming train, and a scenic - if slightly nerve-wracking - 75 minutes later we arrived at our guesthouse. Dalhousie only really exists to provide a base for those climbing Sri Lanka's most famous mountain. Remember Little Adam's Peak? This is its big (BIG) brother, and although at about 7,500 feet it's actually only the country's fifth highest peak, its status as the home of Buddha's footprint ensures a steady stream of pilgrims during the dry season: this is Sri Laka's second most sacred Buddhist site. (Number one, in case you were wondering, is the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, which houses a relic claimed to be - logically enough - Buddha's tooth. Apparently tooth trumps footprint.) Incidentally, Muslim tradition holds that the footprint was in fact made by Adam - hence Adam's Peak - and the mountain is a holy place for them too, as indeed it is for Hindus and even Christians. Sri Lankans have got religious pluralism down to a fine art.

We'd heard plenty of horror stories about the Adam's Peak climb, not least from the guidebook itself, which paints it as a gruelling ordeal "which reduces even seasoned hillwalkers to quivering wrecks". Being about as far from a seasoned hillwalker as you can get without actually being bedridden, this did not fill me with enthusiasm. Nor did the book's orders that we rouse ourselves at 2am to get cracking. Even at this time in the morning there were already dozens of people making their way down - the pilgrims we passed were an eclectic mix of monks wearing hoodies over their saffron robes, families with small children, groups of teenage boys with beanies plled up high on their heads, making them look curiously like smurf hats (for someone who's only ever seen half an episode of the Smurfs I seem to reference it an awful lot), and people supporting the elderly or infirm - we even saw one (unaided) guy with what looked like a broken foot, which effectively quashed my right to complain. It wasn't actually that bad, though - not exactly a walk in the park (unless your local park features 5500+ increasingly steep, often crumbling steps), but it certainly never felt unachievable. It's undeniably atmospheric, too - the path is dimly lit and sprinkled with all-night stalls selling baffling useless tat (can you think of any circumstances in which you'd want to buy a luminous pink chihuahua toy before setting off up a mountain?), as well as plenty of tea shops - we stopped at one to refuel on rroti fresh from the griddle, and were plied with tooth-achingly sweet milky tea by the owners, who looked a bit taken aback to see us. Including stops, it took us just over two and a half hours to reach the summit (as opposed to the four stated in the guidebook - maybe it was written by the guy with the broken foot) , where dozens of people were already sitting huddled against walls, wrapped in towels, many of them asleep. As well as a small collection of buildings (one of which contains the distinctly anti-climatic footprint) the summit boasts two large bells, which visitors ring once for each successful ascent they've made. Having given our single rings (which sounded a bit feeble when a couple of people after us rang thirteen times apiece) we settled down to wait for sunrise. This, you see, is the reason most of the non-religious tourists make the climb: once the sun has risen, a mysterious shadow of Adam's Peak is visible for twenty minutes or so, seemingly floating in the air. I say "mysterious" because the shadow does't actually correspond to the shape of the mountain, a discrepancy I have yet to see a convincing explanation for.

The descent was easier-going, though not much quicker, and once back we spent the rest of the day just relaxing. The following morning it was straight off to Kandy, the country's second largest city. Unlike the rest of Stri Lanka, the kingdom of Kandy fell neither to the Portuguese nor the Dutch, and it wasn't until 1815 that the British finally got their hands on it (not through any particular merit of their own - Kandyans were apparently so dissillusioned with their brutish king that they stood aside to let the invaders past). The city's chief sight is the aforementioned Temple of the Tooth complex, but as visitors aren't actually permitted a glipse of the fabled tooth (which, rumour has it, looks suspiciously animal-like) we didn't feel compelled to go in. Instead we spent the afternoon checking out a few handicrafts shops, the highlight of which (as testified to by the fact that Mike didn't object to being in the shop for longer than tirty seconds) was a place called Rajanima Crafts, where you can see master woodcarvers working on the gorgeous custom furniture they sell (including, to the obvious amusement of the staff, a throne comissioned by a Dutch moneylender, who's even created a crest for himself to have carved all over it. Classy). Some pieces are painted using hues created from an extraordinary substance called rainbow wood: the sawdust is placed in water to which various natural materials (such as iron, lime juice or chalk) can be added to produce a startling array of vivid colours.

That evening we'd arranged - with a certain amount of trepadition - to go along to a so-called "cultural show". These are staged by a few venues in town and are basically a showcase for traditional Kandyan dancing and drumming, witha couple of low country dances and a bit of firealking thrown in for good measure. Approximately one hundred and ninety three people attempted to sell us tickets in the street: clearly the thought of a tourist slipping through the net and not going along is unthinkable. Overall, though, we were a bit underwhelmed by the performance - most of the dancers didn't seem particularly professional, and the promised spectacular acrobatics never really materialised. The Mask Dance was probably the highlight - originally an exorcism dance, the performers wear huge demonic-looking painted wooden masks, smaller versions of which have become a quintissestial Sri Lankan souvenir.

The next day - yesterday, in fact (yes, oh patient ones, the end is in sight!) we hired a driver (I feel very swish typing that) and drove about forty kilometres west of Kandy to - drumroll please! - Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage. This, those of you who know me well will not be remotely surprised to hear, was one of the main reasons for coming to Sri Lanka in the first place. I'd originally been planning on working as a volunteer at the orphanage for a couple of weeks, but eventually decided against it because a) I worried I wouldn't get to see much else of the island, b) they stopped offering accommodation, and c) they placed rather too much emphasis on dung-shovelling duties for my liking. Still, here we were as visitors, having carefully timed our trip to tie in with the morning feeding session, which we thought would be the least busy of the three - maybe it is, but it was still packed. Our guidebook had promised that for a small extra payment you could bottle-feed a baby elephant yourself, and signs up at the ticket desk confimed this - I'd been looking forward to it for weeks. When we tried to buy feeding tickets, though, we were baldly told that we couldn't, with no further explanation. This wasn't going according to plan. The feeding session wasn't what we'd expected either - rather than alll of the orphanage's 70-odd elephants, only two calves were present, chained inside a pen (apparently even the elephants in the national zoo here are chained), and, gallingly, we had to just look on as people who had mysteriously managed to procure tickets took turns feeding them - our driver later told us that tour guides buy up all the feeding tickets for their groups before anyone else can get a look in. Hmmph! Luckily, though, he managed to bribe one of the supervisors into letting us groupless scum take a turn (finally, the system works in our favour!) - mission accomplished! And I've never seen anyone so excited to get an extra serving of milk.

After the feeding we got to see the rest of the residents roaming around, a couple of pachyderm celebrities among them: Raja, an enormous blind tusker, and Sama, who lost a foot when she stepped on a landmine and has been making her way around on three legs ever since. Here only the working elephants (many of them help out around the orphanage) or the particularly mischievous ones were wearing chains, and you could get extremely close to many of them (staff would head you of if it looked like you were actually going to touch an elephant, which I originally assumed was for safety reasons, but it turned out it was so they could charge tips from anyone wanting contact. Business as usual). We then headed across the road to to banks of the Ma Oya river, where the elephants take their thrice daily baths. Watching them being driven, three or four abreast, along the road to the river is quite a sight - more than once we only got out of the way just in time, as a huge elephant lumbered onto the spot of the pavement where we'd been standing seconds before. Many of them pressed right up to us, their trunks searching the crowd hopefully for food.

Having watched the elephants in the water for half an hour or so I reluctantly said goodbye, and we drove a few kilometres back towards kandy to the Millennium Elephant Foundation, which is home to a handful of retired working elephants, as well as a couple of young 'uns. (By which I mean teens and twenty-somethings rather than calves.) There's a small but absorbing museum stuffed with facts about elephants, including a chart showing the 90 or so pressure points an elephant will respond to and the twenty words which working elephants are taught. (Erm taught to understand, that is, not to speak. Obviously.) The guidebook had told us, somewhat vaguely, that we'd be able to "interact" with elephants here - it turned out that this means being taken for a quick (and decidedly uncomfortable) elephant ride, and then helping to give our steed (can an elephant be a steed?) a bath, scrubbing his skin with coconut husks. His contribution to the proceedings was to spray us liberally withwater every now and then.

Phew! It took me well over an hour to type all that; does that automatically disqualify me from 95% of temp jobs?