24th April 2010 -Sri Lanka – The Missing Day

As my last Sri Lanka blog said we are going to attempt the following Bonus which is worth 400 points. I had to put a few days between this experience and my blog so that I could regain some perspective on the situation!!!!
Adam, Alexander the Great and Buddha are said to have done it but Idn Batuta and Marco Polo did do it!! Climb Adam's Peak and explain a foot prints on the rock at its summit. (Note the stairway to the top is believed to be the "longest in the world"
The guide book says: - Adam's Peak is the 5^th largest mountain on the island standing at 2,243 meters (7,360 ft). Adam's Peak is easily the most dramatic, rising in solitary splendor above the surrounding hills. The strange impression on the bare rock at its summit is claimed to be a footprint made by Buddha himself during one of his legendary visits to the island. Thousands of pilgrims haul themselves up thousands of steps to pay devotions to the footprint. ….."Men, women, old and young some almost decrepit, some who actually die on the way, many have to be pulled or carried up…. People from every way African, priests and laymen, princes and paupers, may be seen striving, toiling, perspiring upwards...The climb is done at night in time for dawn, one has the best chance, weather permitting, of seeing the extraordinary sunrise and the associated spectacle known as the "Shadow of the Peak", whereby the rising sun casts a perfect triangular shadow of the peak's summit, which hangs miraculously suspended in m id – air for 20 minutes or so. This bizarre phenomenon has yet to be satisfactorily explain… but visiting Buddhist take it as proof of the mountains extraordinary supernatural qualities.
You can't read this clearly but the number that followed the Adams Peak line is 4800 steps.

The hotel rooms were clean but definitely different. It was also extremely hot as I was afraid to open the windows, our room was below ground level but you could walk up to the window and climb in easily. There were no fans and some mosquitos so we pulled our mosquito nets which ade it even hotter. We had normal toilets and hot water. This still scores a high grade in hotels for me.

Well the guy who was suppose to wake us at 2.00am never knocked, thank goodness Rainy awoke by himself and in the dead of night in pitch blackness we departed the hotel to find the start of the climb. Needless to say it was cold and yes you guessed it, it was raining just a fine drizzle but just enough to make things slippery. When you looked up the mountain you could see in the distance the path out lined in lights. We stopped and bought some cheap (rain coats – they look like a garbage back but one 2 sides are cut open. You place your head in the bottom corner or point which made the hat and then jus wrap yourself in the rest of the plastic). It was a fashion statement these purple rain coats

Well we started to walk; nobody tells you that for the first 3 miles you walk in through a small "village" of shops etc and yes you guessed it that walk goes down to the bottom of the valley of Adam's Peak. So when you see photos of the mountain understand that the climb starts at the very bottom in the valley. About 10 minutes after you start the steps start and at first you very gently start the incline upwards. At this point I was last in the pack with Lily and Zoe out front, Rainy in the middle and I bringing up the rear. I knew that if I was ever going to complete this challenge I would have to pace myself. Once the steps started I started to count in groups of 100. Needed to know how far I had gone when I couldn't go any more. I didn't want to quit 10 minutes from the top of something. We knew that it was suppose to 4800 steps. Very quickly I pulled into the lead with the others lagging. I was just counting and climbing. I was determined to get to half way before I took a break. At around 2000 steps the group started to lag and by 2400 steps Lily started to panic. She was nauseous, dizzy and very afraid that she could go no further. Zoe was also very exhausted and Rainy later admitted that he didn't think he could possible make it either. I sat Lily down (n we had done about ½ the climb in 1 hour and we had 2 more hours to dawn when you had to be at the Peak. We could slow down I gave her water, some crackers and as Lily calls them "miracle beans" or sports jelly beans, very sweet and she uses them on marathons. We all had 2 beans and I made a deal with Lily when she started to feel better. We would go up 100 steps at a time and we would take a break. The steps vary in size, some are parts are harder because they are very deep and steep and others are shallow and shorter, some are slippery stones, parts are gravel, parts are muddy and some are concrete. So some areas are easier than others, but all are hard. We started back our climb with me out front like the rabbit. I would go ahead and count 100; the rest would come behind, depending on how difficult the area was sometimes I would push to 125 or 150. Sometimes the places we wanted to rest were filthy and we would aim for a little higher or Lily would decide she could make it to the next light pole. We helped encourage and drag each other up this beast. It was grueling, we had to buy numerous bottles of water, we were all soaking wet with sweat even though the night air was cool.

The sobering parts was as hard as it was for us, if you looked around they had all types of people attempting this pilgrimage. One lady was going up on all fours- that's right on her hands and knees. I think she must still be up there. The elderly are being helped up by the young. Men with only 1 leg were climbing with crutches. Some people take days to do this climb. The closer you got to the top the narrower the staircase became and the more crushing the crowd, in fact it was very claustrophobic at times.

The good news is that we reached the last stair case as dawn started to break out in the east. At this point we were actually climbing through clouds.

We got to the top WE HAVE DONE IT!!!We reached the TOP of THE WORLD. I never seen such a wide grin on Lily she was so proud to have actually make it.
We finally pushed, shoved and got to the top in time for the punja ceremony start. I had taken 3 hours to do this very arduous climb. Some pilgrims carried bottles of water up the steps and when they got to the top they poured it over a flame as seen below. This is the second time I have seen this in action I just don't know the significance.

The drums started to beat, people started feeding the monks and we realized that we had another narrow staircase to climb to pass by Buddha's footprint. This picture is taken on the exit before the shoving started.

The people on that staircase were so aggressive. They shoved, pushed elbowed you and squeezed until you felt you couldn't breathe. It was NOT a pleasant experience. When we got to the top to see the footprint, a monk forced you to your knees and shoved your head down on the ground 3 times ( as respect to Buddha) the problem was that the footprint was covered with a cloth. You see people through money on the footprint and to prevent it getting damaged they cover it in a cloth. 4,800 steps later and the footprint was covered and the cloud coverage was so heavy that the sunset was minimal and not enough to create the "shadow of the Peak" I was so disappointing. The view was fabulous though so we had a small trophy for our climb. Then guess what 20 minutes later we had to go back down all 4,800 steps. I really had anticipated that the down climb would have been much easier, not so at all. In fact I rather climb up. There are very few hand rails and the steps are so uneven and deep that it was absolute hell on your knees. My legs were trembling and shaking and half way back down is when I finally felt I had reached break point. Lily, Zoe and Rainy managed to get much further ahead than me so I had no encouragement from the. Every so often I sat down and felt I could go no more but that is when the strangers in strange lands became my encourager. Every time I felt I was finished someone would come along, touch me on the head and pull me up and encourage e again. When I finally got to the bottom of the valley the final 3 mile walk out of the valley seemed to like one of those nightmares you have when you can't ever get to the end of a task. Every time I thought had reached the road twisted and turned again. On the way down a monk blessed Lily and Zoe, he gave them the red dots on their foreheads and tied a red string on their hands which you are not suppose to remove, you are suppose to wear it until it drops off. Lily is still wearing hers. This photo is taken at the END of the entire ordeal.
I had not even remembered that we had walked that far the night before. Finally almost exactly 5 hours later our ordeal was over. We were back at the storage little guest house, having a shower and breakfast while we started at the mountain in the distance that we had just conquered. I learnt from this experience 2 things I climbed that beast twice, the first and the last time. And I CAN do ANYTHING that I put my mind to do. I am STRONGER than I think. I CLIMBED Adam's Peak in 5 hours from start to finish another young girl at the hotel said she took 12 hours to do it. So I felt like from now on nothing can get the better of me.

We packed up from the hotel and started our 4 hour drive back to our hotel in Colombo. We stopped and watched a street cricket match and took a photo with the team that was a scavenge.

We tasted the wood apple fruit. This fruit is rock hard on the outside, it smells like a sapodilla on the inside and tastes like a tamarind. The shell s so hard that you have to crack it like a nut to get inside to taste it.

When we got back to Colombo, Lily and I went to take our bags back to the room and then took a variety of tuktuk to complete a few more challenges in the city e.g. visit Pettah market and find 3 streets and tell what is sold on them. It is spices, jewelry and whole sale.

Visit the Dutch museum. Find Cargils which is a department/supermarket and then Lils and I went back to the hotel so we didn't miss check in at 4.00pm. Bill had us for an Italian dinner and it was wonderful to sit and eat "normal" food. What a day. What a night!!! We were told that we were off to Amman – Jordan and we were leaving at 2.30am.
The Adam's Peak climb is like childbirth when was in the middle of the climb it was the hardest thing I had ever done physically in my life but as I look back now I having bragging rights for climbing it but the experience does not seem as nightmarish as it did at the time.