As a child in a basket through a tropical country (5).

Henny did not laugh: in the rest house he took his rear wheel from his bicycle and inspected the rip in the rim. Also the tyre was ripped along the rim, the spare ones were all spent. With a sigh Henny picked up everything together and went into the small city. He left the tyre behind with the shoe mender along the street who began sowing a piece of leather over the rip. Fortunately the wheel could be welded. Such a wobble baby like our daughter, has a rather negative effect on the material. It has to be said that we had hardly renewed our bicycles for this "short" trip of 4000 km. We used partly the same material that we used on our world tours.

Densely populated

We went into the mountains again, what a beautiful, varied, island Sri Lanka is, mountains, forests, coast and tropical lowland, all together, on a Dutch scale. But it seems that it is even much denser populated. And that could readily be seen. Except the northern plaines, where the Tamils live more in villages, you cycled as a matter of fact, on small roads, through endless ribbon development, fanning banana trees, shady mango and other tropical plants.

It was quite difficult to defecate unseen, so that we were often forced to visit the tea houses to use the "kakkoesias": a useful colonial heritage of the Dutch: "kakhuisje" In the cooler mountains we had hoped to be able to camp, instead of sleeping in rest houses, but every flat piece of land was used by a hut. In the endless, treeless, tea plantations which lay as lumpy green blanket over the mountains, was also no place for us. By the house of the manager we were allowed to put up our tent at the back of the lawn. The white uniformed servant with a beautiful fan on his head, brought us stylish a tray with a floral teapot and cups, filled with delicious tea from the estate - camping with servants, what a luxury.
We left the tea under us to climb Sri Lanka's highest point. Horton Plains, a nature reserve. The people had shown us a narrow road which was so steep and bad that we mainly had to walk. Above 2000 meters was a vast primeval forest of bizarre trees, overgrown by strings of moss, which shone through spookily, in the oncoming fog. For the first time the silence befell us again and the sleeping bag came in very handy that night. The highest peaks of Sri Lanka, approximately 2400 m were hills here, very near to us. As long as our food supply allowed us, we stayed up here in the marvellous quietness and silence.
In the west we saw the sharp peak of Adam's Peak rise up between the other hills. At the top there was a monastery, where in a rock the foot print of Adam, Buddha or Shiva could be seen, frequently visited by thousands of pilgrims, who climbed the 4000 steps, illuminated staircase at night, to see the sunrise in the morning. It took some pilgrims two days and nights, Henny in just about 1 ½ hour. The next day he couldn't move a step because of muscle pain, but fortunately he could cycle.
We descended again towards the coast, via tea, to rubber plantation - for bicycle tyres, Idhuna knew. And finally into the humid heat of the rice fields and coconut palms, where fellow cyclists were cycling around; fishmongers calling malu malu, the baker's apprentices with baskets full of loaves, pedlars with bicycles full of household items; and most important for Idhuna in the heat "biep, biep". "Daddy, icecream!"
Just like us she ate and drank everything, also water, except the extremely hot curries in the teahouses but just like we, she also fell not ill. Perhaps she had inherited the globe trotter's resistance.
Cycling forces you to assimilation between and with the people, as a result of which you and they feel completely at home.
Strange we stood on the airport in the western luxury. Idhuna had to pee, but did not want on the sit-toilet, since she was used to the squat toilet. "Perhaps a white has sat on it, stinking" she said.