Hello again,
The latest journey continues as Sara and I made our way from Kandy to Adam’s Peak. The drive there was our first scenic viewing of the winding mountain roads, rewarding us with stunning views of tea fields laid out across the countryside. A magnificent site. Our reason for heading this way was to climb the famous Adam’s Peak.
Adam’s peak has a historical holy meaning to all religions. Buddha is thought to have visited the site, and also at the top a footprint in the mountain is believed by others to be the first foot print of Adam on earth from Biblical tales. For us, it was more of an adventurous outing to see some cool things and get some exercise. A challenging hike, you walk up 5200 stairs, crossing many religious stalls along the way to get to the final building at the top. Here you ring a large bell to mark your climb, and also watch the sunrise.
Getting to the peak by sunrise means waking early and beginning your hike at 2 am. We settled into our hotel, and went to bed early. We had been unsure if we needed a guide, and our driver suggested one, so we forked over 20 bucks to bring a local guide along. The next morning we met him early, and headed on our journey.
Sadly this became one of those cases where bringing the guide was a negative. He spoke almost no English, and the path was trivial to follow. Oh well, win some lose some. It wasn’t that simple though. As he marched ahead of us, he continually farted, burped and spit into the wind, almost hitting us. To top it off, at one point we walked off the trail and he was nowhere to be found! We had a good sense of humor about it all, eventually :).
The hike itself was great, and the view from the peak was fantastic. It was howling wind, so we were thankful for the warm clothes we wore. After being put in a bit of a jaded mood by our guide, we couldn’t resist making some jokes about how they had perfectly hung power lines in the view of the sunset. Attention to detail people! But overall, it was memorable. The hike down was tough, but eventually we parted ways with the gas producing spiting machine, got some breakfast and prepared for the next leg.
Off we drove to the tea capital of perhaps the world, Nuwara Eliya.
See you then!