Sunday, March 29, 2009

Making mountains out of molehills

You can categorise your friends - some cheer you up, some are easy to talk to, some are ‘just there’ and some are so annoying because they make mountains out of mole hills.  

Yes there is one and we have had many trials with him. He once recommended a movie very highly - a movie you would never tell anyone you ‘bought tickets’ to watch. We have learnt the hard way that the Las recommendation = disappointment!

But as we are in dreary old London where it is a race against time to catch the mild rays of the sun, we jumped at the idea of climbing, what he called a ‘MOUNTAIN’, one early spring morning in March.

With the experience of climbing Siripada - Adams Peak   (the second highest mountain in Sri Lanka at 7341 feet above the sea-level) and a few other high climbs, we braced ourselves with lightweight sweaters, climbing shoes, lots of energy food and plenty of liquid.

Off we went to tackle our friend's ‘Mountain’ with new found energy and a positive outlook towards London, the one place on earth which seems to offer everything (including mountains) within city limits. 

In short, the "mountain" turned out to be the Northala Fields - a small man made bump in the grass, which we climbed right to the top in less than 5 minutes. The great mountain  our great friend wanted to show us remains a mystery … 








Thursday, March 12, 2009

London Zoo

After a long hibernation, both of us decided to venture out on what was called a ‘relatively warm day with sunny intervals’ by our ever reliable Met department. Our destination - the London Zoo. It was a bold move as every single person we had met while in London said that it was just not the place to go to.

Our desperation to see any form of wildlife, after a period of over 6 months with not even a worm in sight, gave us the confidence to face this challenge.

As animal lovers, who have seen the worst of the worst, we must say that the zoo was not as bad as it was said to be. Here is the evidence.


No it's not a brick wall - it's a fish tank with this sea anemone

A green mamba attempting suicide?


Mr Gorgeous

Bali Starling - can you believe there are only 8 more in the wild


The shot - A blue Morpho


The cuties - White-Eyes



The sunny intervals never came and we had to spend over 2 hours standing next to the gorilla enclosure looking very much like two wet crows waiting to grab some of their food. Unfortunately Mr forgot to take any of shots of ‘us’ - the humans ...