Well it's a warm welcome to all our readers worldwide and particularly in Asia as we blog on the road from sto Lanka . We had an awful hotel last night the food was terrible and in the morning they tried to charge is for the rooms which were already paid for , we were the only European guests the others were locals working around batticolea . We ended up skipping breakfast as well as the dinner , lion beer was the only positive thing. We left there promptly at 7.30am this morning and were glad to find that much of the highway from batti to kandy had been renewed and we had a couple of stop offs to record the busy bus scenes inbthecdnslker towns whose bus services were more extensive than most British cities. We had some terrible heavy rain early in and as we travelled we saw many troops of monkeys waiting to set upon silly travellers who may stop and offer them food, several species noted as we rolled along reaching the city around lunch time. By early afternoon the schools are finished for the day and all hell breaks loose at the bus stations possibly the most hectic scenes we have ever recorded worldwide. The weather picked up in the afternoon and by tea time we had enough film and were ready to meet up with our driver and check in to the really excellent clove villa a four bedroom mini hotel. This was the best place we have ever encountered in sto Lanka with lovely staff who are do sincere and helpful and the food we spot on. I'm up early tomorrow hoping for a catch up with soaps tonight catching he 06.30 train to Colombo in the morning and intending to get yet more coverage of the lorries on the last of our working days as we have seen precious little in he north and east where even private cars are very rare.
Hello good evening from the banks of the river thingey in batti which is short for a Sri Lankan bunch of squiggles which alternate between Tamil and Sinhalese as you please . The hotel was specialty selected to annoy us but being chilled out after our days adventures nothing co old deflect from the wonderful experiences on the way here. We set off from the tourist ghetto of chyaa blue this morning before the masses had appeared for breakfast, as it was this suited us and I selected carefully from the previous evenings left overs some pancakes with syrup and Danish pastries which I covered with flaked white and dark chocolate much to the astonishment of two young Japanese honeymooners who marvelled at this latest western manifestation of dining delights.we boarded our little palace on wheels with our trusted mahout who had recently graduated from elephant training college the gears were obviously not in the first lesson but no doubt will be taught later. Thrilled with the diversity of the scenery Martin and I laid odds on the first animals to obstruct the road although dogs and cows were excluded due to be ubiquitous I picked monkeys and Martin shrewdly he though picked crows. Actually it was chameleons which appeared and they grew larger as the day went on . We passed numerous army and airforce bases leaving trincomallee and they were patrolling the roads and bridges but they all smiled and no trouble at all. The atmosphere in batti despite the troubles is superb and at the railway station we spent many happy hours in the blistering heat witnessing the shunting of locks and even the climax which was the Ashok leyland tailcoat twin set which arrived only very slightly late and the staff at the station including the stations porters ticket sellers crossing attendants drivers points men and all the other several hundred were superb and the goats cows and dogs were all happy to join in our adventure. More tomorrow from that lovely te splendid isle of Sri lanka
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