Lanka Challenge - Days 4 and 5

 Each day before setting off in our tuk tuks, everyone got together for a briefing on the route, and any challenges for the day. You can already tell from Kate's last post that some of the challenges are way outside our comfort zone. I didnt really think that I would be able to convince a soldier to have a pushups contest, but I guess from their perspective it was the most interesting thing to happen to them all year, so why not.

So after a very ordinary night's sleep in our tent/sauna, everyone was told that it was Team Race Day. There were no crazy challenges today other than to be the first team to make it to the destination - Jaffna, about 120km north of where we were at the time; over some of the nastiest, most unforgiving 'roads' I've ever seen.

Of the 14 or so people in the 6 teams which formed our group, everyone instantly and unanimously nominated Katie as the Team Captain. Looks like someone made a good first impression. Never doubting the talents of our fearless, peerless leader, we readied our compass (no one else had one), map (all other team maps were confiscated by the organisers to 'enhance' the team spirit) and spare bottle of petrol (safely stored in some random plastic container we found) and headed off into the uncharted wilderness. I say uncharted since there were a lot more little dirt tracks than there were lines on our map.

We took the road much, much less travelled, based on it heading in a direction which seemed to make sense at the time, and ended up bush bashing the next 3 kms (45 mins), stopping every few hundred meters to clear tree branches from the path. we eventually burst out onto a less crappy looking dirt track, which allowed for an increase in our speed, although our rear tyre did some bursting of it's own, and we had to do some super fast F1 style tyre changing, using our 180 rupee spanner (which again, no one else had thought to bring... lucky?). To change a rear tyre on a tuk tuk involves pushing the whole vehicle up on its other two wheels, and then balancing it there while the flat is changed. Lucky we had a few other team members t help out with that job. From that point it was full throttle racing all the way to the end. We dont have many pics of that day, since kate was busy holding on for her life while I was doing my best not to topple our little tin can on wheels.

To cut a long story short - our team won. we arrived at around 2:45pm to the YMCA at Jaffna, at least 45 mins ahead of the next team. Looks like Kate was the right man for the job of Team Captain.

That afternoon there was a bit of a ceremony at the YMCA, where the local Red Cross thanked everyone in the challenge for the donations which allowed them to purchase mobility equipment for landmine victims in the area. I couldnt really hear anything that was going on, but Kate ended up with a big, plastic, golden ceremonial necklace. All the girls involved in the Challenge got one, so we hung ours from our tuk tuk, along with our latest chilli-related homemade bling...

The next morning it was announced that it was the Long Haul day. Over 200km to travel, over even more shock-absorber destroying terrain. Along the way we had to visit various points of interest like a war museum and a beached supertanker; but the most difficult challenge would be to convince 10 or more local people to teach us a traditional Tamil song, and then sing it with us for at least a minute. All to be captured on film of course.

We stopped at a tiny school along the way, barged into the principal's shack, and explained what we wanted through hand gestures and short words, 'students ... teach .... singing ... tamil ... me ... please'. With perfect comprehension achieved, the principal marched us into the year 8 class of 11 students, and instructed one lucky kid to teach us the chorus to a local tune. We then sang along with the class, mumbling and lip syncing our way through the verses. I say 'we', but kate was huddled behind the camera while I made a 5-star ass of myself. Go team.

Once we are back in a country with decent bandwidth I will upload a few of these videos, so you can appreciate how crazy some of these challenges really were.

The rest of the Long Haul day went by very gradually. We made a few wrong turns, which cost us a lot of time, since towns were few and far between, and the going was slow, with us slogging through knee-deep sand at times.

We eventually had to stop for dinner around 8pm, still miles away from the checkpoint. It turned out to be the best meal we had to that point however, so there is the silver lining. We had Chicken Kotu Roti, which is small strips of roti bread thrown onto a bbq plate along with a bunch of grated veggies, an egg and a fistful of herbs and spices. Everything is chopped up and thrown around with two big handheld pieces of metal, and then served with a fiery curry sauce on a plate covered in plastic or cling wrap (since the cleanliness of reusable plates cannot be guaranteed).

We made it to the hotel by a bit after 830pm, and the next day was our first rest day (which Kate used to compose her last blog post).

Adventures and bad roads forgotten for now, everyone settled in to relax and sleep.

More to come on the lanka challenge in our next post.

till next time

//Brendan