sri pada, or adam's peak, or the resting place of siva, or maybe st thomas

lots of pictures!

we went up sri pada on sunday night. train to hatton first, then a taxi to delhouse at the foot of the mountain, from where the peak looks something like this and very fearsome:



so we got ourselves a room right next to a loudspeaker and spent three or four hours listening to some very bad drummers walking around annoyingly before it was time to wake up again. what you do is, you climb the mountain in the dark and watch the sunrise at the top, then hang around for the morning ceremony (if you're buddhist) and then come down again. there are thousands of people doing this - we did some idle speculation and guessed at a million people a year - and some of them are pretty old, or young, or otherwise looking entirely unsuitable for climbing mountains.

it took about three hours, but we gave ourselves a few breaks - there are lots of tea shops all the way up although they get more and more expensive nearer the top.



this is us at the top with some people we met on the way. note the blankets; it was really cold!



and here, finally, the sunrise! our idle speculation as to where the sun might rise was almost completely incorrect, but if we'd been facing the other way we would have been right! see? you see?

after the sunrise, everyone crowds to the other side of the mountain to see the shadow the mountain casts on the haze below - it's said to represent the buddhist equivalent of the holy trinity:



and then you go down:



(there are steps you see, it's not real climbing), and then you are completely knackered for days, it's like jet lag.

OBLIGATORY WEIRD ANIMAL PHOTO: it's a big moth! life size-ish.