The adventure begins!

Today was the day we were heading to Adam’s Peak to climb the mountain, to see the sunrise when we reached the top!

Carried on with the mural today, slowly but surely and this time working on the peacock. I needed the right red paint and more resources for walls and ceilings, so took a little trip in a 3 wheeler with Nayani. She had errands to do as well: paying for our new water tank (hopefully we won’t run out now!), electricity board and sorted the paint, even watched them mix it! Don’t see that happening in the shops back home – pop to Homebase or somewhere, find the right colour from the huge range there is from the shelves and take it.

My teaching in the afternoon went well testing the children on the animals I taught them and colours which they should already know. Before I knew it time went over the lesson time and I had to go and get ready for adventure to Adam’s Peak (Sri Pada in Sinhalese). I was the only teaching, as the other teachers suspected that we weren’t going to teach so all the other lessons (except mine) carried on for an extra 45minutes. This was even though Pam wasn’t going to come with us, but they forgot about that one!

In the end after getting ready for scheduled time of 4pm we leisurely left at 5pm, finding more people to join us for our 15 seater van that day, which Ananda and Nayani organised. We were surprised to find that the van arrived as a 10 seater instead! Slight problemo, as there were now 12 people to seat – 6 of us (Pam stayed behind), Ananda, Nishanta, his brother Predeep, their mate Suresh, their Uncle and painter for the playground Koomara and the driver! Tis all good though cos where there is space people can sit! We squashed 4 in the back instead of 3 and the other person sat behind the front passengers where there was a box to sit on. Must say it was very cosy, especially as this van had a lot less space than last weekends’s one! Trust that to happen! This meant less ventilation and when the whole of the bottom of the van was heated up so much it was burning hot, it was nastily hot! Was nice when it got cooler and when it started to rain when you got the shower coming from the window (well for us at the back it was – more of a full blast for those by the windows as it was chucking it down with rain!)

We’d already done 6hours with 2hrs left; longer than we thought! Suddenly the boot fell open as we were travelling up the hill! At this point 3 bags were lodged into the small compartment space so we could have more leg room and when it opened Rachel heard something fall. Kept shouting to the driver to stop, but he kept on going! Later he heard and finally stopped got out search the van. No where to be seen, we looked high and low back where the van went after the boot opened. It was pitch black and thankfully everyone else had torches, to look on the roadside and down the ditches. It seemed so random that within 5 minutes my bag was no where to be seen. Even with someone phoning my phone which was inside, did we still not find it! The van driver even looked further down the hill, so much so we didn’t know if we’d have a van to go back in as it took so long without us! We’d tried as much as we could and then bumped into a well spoken English local, who was able to direct us to the police station half a kilometre up the road. When I went in to make my statement I was pleased that Predeep (Nisthanta’s brother) was with me as the officer could speak little English and later found out that policemen sometimes take advantage of women by themselves at night! Shocking how corrupt Sri Lanka is; you expect to trust a policemen! Makes you wonder who you can trust nowadays! So I stated this report to the policeman through Predeep. Very confusing, and seemed very lost in translation! It seemed like I lost my life in the bag; passport, driving license, bank card, money, phone, ipod, glasses, prescription sunglasses and warm clothes for climbing the mountain! Was very annoyed, frustrated, hungry as we hadn’t eaten that evening, and tired! The officer wasn’t making matters any better as he wasn’t concentrating on my incident, busy answering calls and writing messages from an answer machine and found my situation rather funny, laughing away and asking ‘Are you sad?’ in a jokable way! For a serious situation I didn’t think he was paying much attention and had no idea of what questions to ask and how to relate to people! Not impressed! We were in the station for 1 ½ hours and were issued with a temporary slip stating the loss of my passport for travelling to Sri Pada and back.