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25 April 2015

Kandy to Ella, Sri Lanka – 31 March 2015

I leave Ella just before 8.30am on Tuesday, 31 March; Prue has our driver from yesterday and he kindly advises me I can stop anywhere along the way. Good to know :)

The "highway" is one lane per direction, yet that doesn't stop everyone (my driver included) driving on the wrong side of the road. A tad scary at times! Numerous times we see people being pulled over and/or being spoken to by the police. Let's hope that doesn't happen to us.

The drive is basically the same throughout the journey, driving through small towns where there are tuk tuks for Africa then through the hills where the views are amazing! We stop briefly for a WC break and photo opportunity. Wow wow wow. You can see for miles and miles.

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Back on the road and through a town that has lots of fruit, vegetable and flower stalls. The next thing I see is numerous monkeys running along the electric wires.

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At one stage the driver asks how old I am; I reply old and that he shouldn't ask someone how old they are. He says he thinks I'm 23 or 24 - yes thanks I'll take that!

Driving in Sri Lanka definitely is an experience, and even more so when you see driving on windy hilly roads. It's toot toot when you go around a corner; toot toot to tell the car in front we are behind; toot toot to tell the car in front we will pass you; toot toot to tell people on the side of the road we are coming and to watch out. A break from the toot toot is needed!!!

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My driver goes to pass a bus on a corner....and within milliseconds the police are driving towards us so we are of course clocked and told to pull over. After getting all of his papers together my driver is off and within a few mi head is back. He advised he needed to pay them off otherwise it's a fine and potentially having his keys taken off him now. I'm very happy he paid the bribe!

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After having another pit stop my driver starts to ask a number of different people the way to Ella, I'm now not feeling very confident with him now. He either knows this or decides to tell me the reason is he went 10km past a destination once so doesn't want to repeat that! Fair enough.

As we get close to Ella the heavens open, light drops at first then it's all on.

4.5 hours after leaving Kandy I finally arrive at The Secret Ella; my paradise stop for the next two nights.

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