Ceylon, and thanks for all the fish

I have now been back in Blighty for a couple of days, and although there is less motivation to write this blog, now that I am back in regular contact with the world I left behind almost 6 weeks ago, for completeness' sake, I need to type aimlessly one more time.

Our final day in Sri Lanka was based mainly around the Esala Perahera in Kandy, which is a 10 day long festival, which is similar in my opinion to british carnivals. If you replace the majorettes with Dancing Sri Lankan men with fire and drums and the floats with elephants adhorned with christmas lights then you have a pretty good representation of the Esala. It increases in magnitude from the 1st day to the 10th, starting with approximately 40 elephants, and inflating to closer to 100 by the end of the period - we caught the 1st day which is perportedly the "least impressive".

In a style that you will have become accustommed to, we didn't merely queue on the street and wait for the procession to start but were invited to join members of the Vet Faculty in the Tranquiliser team (which had the coolest stash in the world) to help inspect the elephants to ensure they were in good health and not in Must etc. After the obligatory period of waiting around for things to start, we were treated to a 1.5 hour Perahera, which although after about an hour became somewhat repetative, still lived up to the hype of one of the best festivals in south asia! Once it finished, and the last elephant had passed into memory, we decided that it was time to go home and pack, judging by the fact it was 10pm, and we left our house at 4am!

Although long (36 hours from door to door for me), the journey home was pretty uneventful - Rediculous consumption of free alcohol, and reaching the plane from dubai as they made their last boarding call were all the excitement that were afforded to us.

That brings me to here, now, sitting in my study in my house in West Buckland, contemplating my trip. I always planned to write a small peice about my final impression of Sri Lanka at this point but have decided agaisnt it. My impression of my trip will change from hour to hour, day to day, so anything I write here will be out of date before anyone ever reads it, so you will have to ask me yourself what my momentary opinion of my trip is next time you see me. I think that all there is left to say is thankyou to anyone who has managed to read my blog this far - I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Oh and of course... Ceylon, and thanks for all the fish xxx