We have booked a driver and van

to take us 8 hours through the south east of Sri Lanka, north into the jungly, tea-dotted hills of the high country. We are up at 6 for a 7am pickup, and AT and I are packed and in decent condition. But Barnaby? Barnaby is dead. Something has happened overnight, and from his peaceful position in bed, he has silently migrated to being half-draped over a small ivory loveseat and soaked in gallons of water. His condition and the source of the liquid remain a Poiroit - scale mystery to this day. We manage a hard-fought victory to get him back to the bed, but the couch is ruined, two geranium coloured stains bleeding out from the throw pillows like stab wounds. Barnaby is a writeoff in the way that a car that has fallen off a bridge into a ravine is lost. He is doing his masters thesis in being poisoned. After 40 minutes of cajoling, encouragement and light threats, the best we can coax from his drooling, pillow-stuffed mouth is a carefully chosen "go.... f@&k..... yourself." We are now an hour late for our departure, and the trip is in actual jeopardy. Our waiting driver sports a large silver watch and neat, thin moustache. He has been patient and professional, but there is an air of severity to him and something military about his physique and movements. This not someone to keep waiting. At this point, we've bribed Barnaby with money and even offered to carry him fireman-style to the van, but he is catatonic and inexorable. We are deciding whether to call the whole thing off or leave our foul-mouthed death-rower for the weekend, when, like a grey-eyed ghost, Barnaby shambles bravely past us, suitcase in hand, and passes out in the back of the van.

We're off, Barnaby stuttering sweaty vowels in the back while throwing up in a bag, with AT and I on sharp lookout for the nearest pharmacy. 20 minutes later we have our friend subdued like a circus tiger with a single cream cracker, high-powered anti-nausea pill and a pair of diazepam. Our driver is awesome, and we make great time, only slightly delayed by a transport truck that has fallen into a deep gully. The landscape quickly turns flat and arid. And dry. And lacking water. Trees give way to spiny shrubs and roadside huts look like hastily-assembled target practise for the nearest wolf to blow down. We're stopped and briskly questioned at a very serious military installation bordering the Katawalua national park. We pass muster and speed into the preserve. The road is serpentine and potholed, sandwiched by a hundred meters of clearcut forest on either side, a measure against Tamil Tiger ambushes. It's obviously an area of tight military importance, and every half kilometer is marked by the blue sandbags and barbed wire of just-erected sniper dugouts. We coast through the park without incident, noting electric fence fringed moats keeping wild elephants wild.

Our only stop on the way north is a famous multi-denominational pilgrimage site. Hindus and Bhuddists trek monthly to the grounds to camp out in the thousands and present offerings of lotus flowers, fruit and oil. It's a scorchingly hot day, really, hotter that you're imagining right now, and we make our way near a river to jealously witness two elephants bathing. I can't remember the last one I've seen in person - maybe a drugged one from my childhood in a traveling circus in my home town - the ones always announced by a parade of go-karting shriners in Fez caps. Can I stop for a moment to say I never understood that connection? Do the shriners own those karts? When do they practise? - so it's a mesmerizing sight until one of the lazy, half-submerged pachyderms takes a loud, elephant-sized dump in the water. I look downstream to the people happily swimming, washing their hair and rinsing out their mouths in the stream and we turn to leave. Nature, I guess!

We wander through the assembled shrines: blinking, carnival-lit dioramas of hogwild decor and cascading neon that look like they've just paid out some extreme spiritual jackpot. Over and again we obey custom by removing our shoes and skirting the temples barefoot and clockwise, a total pain in the neck with the begrudgingly-purchased snap-fastened mandals I'm wearing (I am historically of the opinion that male toes have no right being shown in public anywhere that does not offer swimming). I am also going on record to say I have truly never stepped on a hotter or more coarse surface than that gravel-impregnated sand, and the black tarmac around one rainbow-striped temple leaves our soles stinging for a half hour afterwards. Sweat-drenched, we retreat for the aspartame A/C of our coach, stopping to marvel at greyhound-sized razor-toothed monkeys and trees inexplicably dressed in license plates. The world is peculiar, eh?

Music: Jessie G: That's Hot!