On the third day of Chris… fuck, no. Just, no… On our third day at Sri Lanka the road, railroad that is, took us from Colombo to Dalhousie via Hatton and two dozen of nobody-gives-a-shit-places. In Dalhousie we had one mission – to drag our fat arses to the top of the ever famous Adam’s Peak. Near 1000 meters of vertical climb along 7km path. Easier said than done, I’m afraid.

The journey begun at near ungodly hours at our residence in Colombo, from where we stormed towards the Colombo Fort railway station to secure our tickets to the second class carts towards to hill country. Once we got our small, almost pathetic pieces of cardboard, we got setup to do a dash towards a suitable cart as soon as one got within the grasp of our dirty hands. Gladly we got some help from a local (allegedly) deaf fella, who got us seated just barely in time as in less than a minute after the train had stopped the whole a cart was full of angrily buzzing people and no free seats to be found. But the Knights managed to secure decent seating for the whole trip \o/

The beginning of the journey was relatively uneventful, though rather early on I figured out that it is perfectly ok to stick your head and arms out of an open window of the train cart. So there I hung, halfway outside the cart like some sorta retarded monkey. Once we passed onto the hill country though, things changed dramatically: Rice fields, small villages and patches of green tropical forests got replaced by rolling hills filled with tea plantations, big and eerily familiar feeling coniferous forests, and deep lush valleys.

Once we got off from the train in Hatton, we hopped onto a local bus, looking (and feeling) like it had escaped from the very early days of automotives. And the ride felt exactly like that as well on the bumpy, twisting hillside serpentine. The view was spectacular for sure, but it was from time to time rather hard to enjoy it while clinging to the seat with all your strength while the drive drove to the narrow turns well over the speed that felt comfortable for us soft westerners. Let alone that the driver seemed to be casually driving with only one hand on the wheel, even when passing other vehicles on a road barely wide enough to fit two side by side (and in many places it wasn’t!)

Regardless, we got to our lodging (relatively) in one piece and prepped ourselves for assaulting Adam’s Peak and taking it for our beloved Order early in the morning. And what a glorious assault it was! (Not!) Those 5500 steps – of varying width and depth in angles from 10 to over 60 degrees – totally obliterated us. It was a true battle of wills, man versus The Mountain, but The Kights of the Sausage Boat did prove the world that sausages do indeed roll uphill with enough encouragement. Rolling it back downhill might prove to be difficult though. Never the less, it was worth of every ache and every drop of sweat to climb to the top of the peak, the view alone was extraordinary, not to mention seeing the gradual change in it as the rising sun woke everything up and cast long shadows into the lush valleys. But the way down, was like a descent into the depths of Hell – for some of us at the least.Regardless of that, in the end awaited a well earned black market beer and some chilling in a serenity of the peace and quiet offered by our riverside accommodation, with complimentary drunken (and most likely stoned as shit) British buffoons! (Yeah, it was incredibly hard and incredibly cool to climb the Adam’s Peak, but it is even cooler to be done with it!)

Ook Ook!

Selfie /w The Knights