After a couple of peaceful days in Ella, we were sad to leave and mostly because it meant getting back in the car. Ron was right having a car gave you freedom, the freedom to stop and take photo's, the freedom to stop and drink tea and the freedom to die horribly in a head-on collision with a crazy bus driver.

We decided to drive through Nuwera Eliya, a place billed as "Little England" (they were right it was pissing down) and spend an extra day not driving, in Kandy, the former capital, home of the Tooth Relic (one of Buddha's apparently) and last city to fall to the British. Our journey was proceeding rather well until we failed to see a speed bump in the pouring rain and smash, our exhaust was no longer attached. Shit! we were going to make some phone calls and do our best bush mechanic impersonation. We limped into Kandy with our muffler dragging on the ground held up only by Emily's belt, Malcom Douglas would have been proud (Remember him? apparently he's all the rage in Germany right now). If only we'd stopped to pray at the road side shrine like the locals did, we'd never have offended the speed-bump gods. As we were crawling towards town we passed another parade. The car was knackered, but we hadn't planned on going anywhere for a couple of days...... fixing it could wait till tomorrow.