Grand Hotel Nuwara Eliya

... de the. Et le must c'est d'y aller en first class car les fenetres sont faites de sorte qu'on puisse prendre des photos... A peine descendu du bus je vais pour m'allumer une clope, la premiere de la journee, quand quelqun m'arrete et me dit qu'il est interdit de fumer dans la rue au Srilanka. Lui dis d'aller se faire foutre et fume quand meme. Ils peuvent chier dans la rue, jeter leur plastique et toutes leur ***** mais moi je peux pas fumer!!!!!<br>Vais donc ...

... of the bus meanderings, together with roadside shrubbery, made it impossible to capture this beauty, so I keenly watched as the true scale of this beautiful area formed before my eyes. There were pretty waterfalls, mountains, lakes and a lot in between. It was between Kandy and Nuwera Eliya, in mountains between the Loolecondera Estate that the first tea leaves were harvested, after disease saw off the island&#8217;s entire coffee plantations.<br><br>The British ...

... during Colonial times - you can easily imagine the Colonial Brits (thanks Grom!) running into the hills away from the heat to find the cooler climate - there was a race course, a polo club, hunting..... It has an average temperature of 16 degrees and it showed! Quite a shock to come from the 30s to the 10s! The locals are wandering around in scarves and woolly hats - we're still in T-shirts. We had a very poor lunch in our hotel - the Alpine. Yuk food ...

... before we left for Kandy. It seemed dodgy at the time and in the morning felt like a pretty bad idea. We hastily packed up, paid the bill at reception and made a runner for the bus stop. Luckily there was a bus just leaving and we were on our way towards Kandy by 8am. As the bus had started in Anuradhapura it was packed by the time we got on. As a result we had to stand by the door for the 3.5 hours it took to crawl into Kandy, nearly an hour of this ...

EN: After Anuradhapura we decided to head to the beach at Arugam Bay in the southeast, driving through Nuwara Eliya and the mountains. The roads in Sri Lanka are quite bad, particularly in the north and east due to the war, so driving can take a long time, it took us 1 whole day to drive to Badulla where Priyanta left us. The views in the mountains were reallu nice as this is also the tea country and ...

... is beautiful its a 120 year old colonial building, it's very posh with huge bed's! It's a bit of a treat! It has a big roaring fire on an evening as it gets quite cold on a night! So retiring now to snuggle in our beds with loads of blankets and eat our picnic! We've treat ourselves to a jar of peanut-butter (it's very expensive) and cereal. We haven't got any bowls though so I'm going to have to magic something out of an old plastic bottle- we are such classy ladies!

... s tea factory on Sunday, where you get shown around the factory and the plantation before having a sampling. We weren't allowed to take photos in the factory itself in case we stole the secrets (so they said). Was interesting to see the process from the tea plants that are picked through the drying process and then refinement. I would like to go to the tea auctions at some point in Colombo which are held on a Wednesday ...

... train to Colombo ( two and a half hours). First class observation car cost me £1.50. Simon Hughes came through to do his video blog for The Telegraph. You can watch it at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/popup /ttv/sport.jhtml?bcpid=1138275681&amp;b clid=1325111698&amp;bctid=1351300197

... Next, we took a train to Heputale, another quaint mountain village. The scenery along the way was breathtaking - tea plantation covered hills, green as far as the eye could see. In Hepulale, we visited a tea factory/plantation and enjoyed more of the cool mountain climate (nothing a little arrack didn't fix...). Then we headed for the beach and spend a few days partying and relaxing on the beach.

... the New Year will travel back and stay over the night before the Clinic as it starts at 8 am. On Tuesday I am traveling into Colombo to meet with the Architect who has been working on the plans for the Vetinary surgery that we are funding on site here at MEF. I am very excited about seeing the plans and finding out the costs (Gulp!) but its really something that we need to do in order to expand the services we can offer and it will also benefit the elephants ...