Thursday 27 September
Met the group at Heathrow - such a good bunch of people, having a laugh already. Feel like we're in the Big Brother house! Everyone very grateful and excited. They're taking bets that I've lost the Adventure Connection sign by the end of the week!
Friday 28 September
After the flight from Heathrow last night our group of adventurers (from a selection of companies including Inside Asia, Travel Nation, Cookson Adventures and Far & Wild Travel) arrived in Colombo and were met by the team from Nkar Travel & Tours. Nkar were brilliant upon arrival - the whole team welcomed us with flowers and water bottles, accompanied by stories of the measures they are using to reduce plastic and educate local communities about plastic waste.
The main group will be heading to the remote north...
Our first taste of Sri Lankan cuisine...
Saturday 29 September
Wilpattu National Park... 2nd highest concentration of leopards in Sri Lanka. They saw them yesterday but none around today.
Jaffna very off the beaten track. No other tourists here. Very rough around the edges compared to the south. I love it - keep re-iterating how wonderfully authentic it is! Nkar guide is absolutely superb - having a good guide is crucial.
Monday 1 October
Literally on the go 20 hours a day so no time to connect to Wi-Fi! Our guide keeps adding things to the itinerary and surprising and delighting us. Today was a train journey for three hours - amazing local colour. Tomorrow Ruth wants to see wildlife so we have all - very willingly - agreed to pay £50 each extra to go blue whale watching and go on a guided snorkelling trip to see reef sharks and hopefully turtles.
Delft Island was interesting, I loved it. Not many places like this left in the world where you get to experience authentic rural life. And the food is out of this world.
Tuesday 2 October
20 blue whales this morning along with lots of dolphins! Half hour snorkelling trip after we saw five sharks, a beautiful green turtle less than a metre away, moray eel, wrasse and even Nemo and Dory together! Not a bad day at the office.
Just finished the day by watching 200 elephants and checking into the most jaw-dropping hotel I've ever stayed in. Everyone is blown away by what we've done today!
Wednesday 3 October
Great day today. Ancient temple - guide bribed the office so we'd have it to ourselves. As we walked out there were loads of tourists coming in (we're down south now and very busy). We then had a cooking lesson in a remote village which was out of this world, followed by a very hot bike ride! Group asked to change itinerary to allow for a couple of hours of pool/down time. Our guide took it all on and worked out a new plan with the office in 10 minutes. Everyone is enraptured with Nkar.
Both the guide and driver have been amazing. Every time we have needed transport the driver magically appeared from nowhere!