Small staircases, sugar milk and 70's jackets

Need to write some things down about the weekend. It was amazing. We went up to the mountains to a place called Narellia for a pastor's confernece. Who would have thought Sri Lanka could be freezing cold in their summer, but yes, yes it can. Nareallia is a nice little town up in the mountains where most of the world's tea is grown.

First of all the journey up was unreal except that our driver crashed the van on possibly the busiest round about in Sri Lanka. Other than Tyler hitting his head on the windshield and the van suffering minor damage we were good to go again. We passed through so much diverse countryside, from dry grasslands to thick lush jungle, from big developed towns to derilict towns, and then finally finished at the beautiful tea plantations village of Narellia with British buildings. Felt like a cross between somewhere in Europe and Nepal (even though I've never been there). But seriously everything is nicer up there, like greener, fresher, even the dogs look a lot nicer. The weirdest part was that its only rained once or twice down in Aragum Bay on the east coast and then you go about 150km inland and its the wet season and is absolutely freezing. As you'll see by the photos we really didn't come prepared for cold, but we were soon greeted by a hot cup of tea by the Sri Lankan pastors. Even though there was about half a cup of sugar in the pot of tea I drank it anyway. I could literally feel my teeth decomposing as I drank the sugar flavoured milk.

At night we went to town and bought some ridiculous 70's clothing to keep warm and then had curry on pancakes for dinner. The little restaurant we went to was so rad. I think my favourite experience at that restaurant was what can be described as my “journey” to the toilet. I passed through a kitchen, then up a set of stairs which was the skinnest corridor with the smallest steps I've ever seen. I think it would have been easier climbing a ladder because firstly I had to duck for the ceiling, secondly the stairs were ridiculously steep. To add to the difficulty the steps were wide enough to fit about a quarter of your foot and they were rounded on the edge for extra slipperiness. Once up the top I worked my way through another maze of a kitchen with little Sri Lankans everywhere, steam everywhere and a little kitten on the floor playing with a ball of string. Finally we finished off the day at the pastors house overlooking a valley english style houses, tea plantations and tea factories. At night I was forced to share a bed with 3 other men, none the less I was thankful to be warm...