Two go wild in Sri Lanka

Special Guest Blog, Sri Lanka Edition,  by Nicky Philpott, aged 57.

I met Rebecca when she wanted more excitement than to be in the NSPCC's governance  team and she seconded herself to the sexy campaigning side. And here we are, 22 or 23 years later. Memories are vague, we were usually drunk.

But when she announced last that she was taking a geriatric gap year I knew I had to join her for some of it, I mean, we'd normally meet up once a month and put the world to rights, which turned into weekly during covid, and who was I going to talk with about the Labour party with in her absence?

The moment she listed her itinerary and Sri Lanka was on the list I knew that is where I wanted to meet her. I've always wanted to go, my partner, Adam, had been several times as a young traveller and later with work so he wasn't interested. And Rebecca's lover, Mark had already been and didn't like it 🙄 so I quickly baggsied this leg of the grand tour. So here I am, so full of different vaccines I could probably survive the Amazon jungle for a lifetime, listening to the sea, peacocks and the hum of the air conditioning writing Rebecca's blog.

As a slight side bar, who knew she could write this well? Her regular updates are eagerly awaited. Nevertheless, I shall try and do her blog justice, without AI.

So what you, and what I REALLY wanted to know is how IS she? Like really, how IS she? How was she feeling? Well, seemingly very very well. She's happy and relaxed and seems to have this traveling thing very much in her stride. She's looking tanned and healthy, although currently sitting next to me googling tobacco so, well healthy but not entirely. She doesn't miss anyone, not even you, and she professes not to even miss any English food, although perhaps Marmite but only a bit. She's entirely her practical, pragmatic, resolute self.

We met at Colombo airport where she'd come from a turtle conservation volunteering project and me directly from the office via an overnight flight on Sri Lankan airlines. We’d booked a driver for the first five days to tick off all the bucket list. Nalaka was fabulous, although in order to please us and my curiosity for number of different types of bananas, he did spend a lot of time at the roadside plying us with fruit. As I sat in the front of the car (travel sickness/more time to quiz him on everything I've ever wanted to ask about Sri Lanka) Rebecca sat in the back underneath a mountain of bananas.

Our first journey was frankly terrifying. The long and winding road to Kandy, monsoon rains causing rivers out of roads and lightening overhead. For the first time travel sickness gave way to adrenaline and fear. When we asked the driver if we should stop, for the first and last time he became very direct saying we needed to get out of there and fast. Landslides. He, and so many were clearly traumatised by the cyclone in November and no wonder, thousands lost their lives and our route took us on roads that had fallen away and were still being repaired. God knows how we made it to Kandy but we did, and we waded to the nearest cafe, ate Kottu and then sat in our hotel necking the gin I'd bought from London.

That’s quite enough for one blog, keep tuned for volume two of this guest blog entitled  things that nearly killed us in Sri Lanka coming soon.