Pain...

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Belihuloya to Haputale
Kilometers: 36.8       Elevation gain/loss: 1,608m/700m


Today I don't walk for the joy of walking, nor for the challenge, nor to get to my next destination. Today I am heartbroken. Today my stomach has contracted to a tiny hard golfball, and in my throat is a ball of hot wire, and my chest is tight and squeezed with something sharp and glasslike. Under my breastbone, spasms rasp at something which feels very core. My beloved little fellow, my Sausage, has died, and I am so terribly sad. I was not there to hold him in his last moments. I could do nothing.

Sausage was not a cat. He was a mad, loving, funny, crazy little man trapped in a small and furry body. He had more personality than most people I know, and loved with complete abandon. Don't think he was just a cat.

He was unique in all the world.

Today I am walking because I have to move all this emotional pain down out of my vital organs, into my legs and feet, and into the earth, into a much simpler pain made of blisters, sweat and lactic acid. Physical pain is so easy. I do not need complex philosophical paradigms to make sense of a bleeding foot. The snuffing out of the little spark that was my Sausage... that just rips jagged holes in my being. I feel porous. Raw. Gutted. Today I will walk until I am too tired to walk any more, so I can drop from exhaustion and sleep a body sleep, dark and quiet. For a few hours, I will hide in that blackness. Tomorrow I will walk more.

When I walk, I am Present, and I do not feel this loss and pain. When I stop, I only think about how I will miss him, how he brightened my world in such a huge way and how I will never have that again. It's thinking of the past and the future which hurts so badly. The now is easy. So I will use walking as my meditation, and will try to think about where each foot is landing, and which muscle is pulling, and how the pack weighs on my back, and one left one right at a time I will move uphill. I will use the rhythm of my steps to dull my thoughts, until nothing but the sound of my own breath panting and the racing of my pulse enters my mind. I will use the hills to get into my breath. Oh please, let there be hills... many, many hills.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

 ~~Khalil Gibran

Into the Hills

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Pallebedda-Badanamure to Weligepola to Balangoda

Kilometers: 35 Elevation gain/loss: 997m/614m

Kahawatta has a serial killer. To date, some 16 women have been murdered, the last few just eigh weeks back, often mother-daughter pairs, usually stabbed, or burned, sometimes raped. Every time a new murder occurs, a new motive is found -- drugs, politics, personal vendettas, underworld connections -- and the perpetrator is speedily put behind bars. Then a few months go by and another woman is killed. In all of Sri Lanka, nowhere is as synonymous with murdered women as Kahawatta. It has all the makings of a Criminal Minds episode (without the FBI) if I've ever heard of one. I'm just not buying the "we've caught the killer, you're safe now" line. Not on my life. I'm not going there. Nope. No way.

Which left me with a dilemma... Follow the road through Kahawatta and I'd have guest houses, places to stay, reasonable distances to cover and gentle inclines along the road. The shortcut, turning off at Pallebedda and heading due north, goes through Weligepola, where there would be no places to stay, insanely steep climbs, and a long, long way to go to reach Balangoda, nearly double my average daily distance. I had little choice; Kahawatta was not getting me.

As I started off, the overcast skies and refreshing drizzle promised a cool and comfortable day. By the time I had reached only half way, however, the clouds parted, the sun came screaming out with a vengance, determined to make up for lost time in the morning, and the heat began to climb. The road dragged on and on, my overloaded pack growing heavier with each passing hour, and the kilometers never seemed to end. At times, with the steep inclines, I barely covered two or three kilometers in an hour. I staggered into Balangoda finally, dripping with sweat, bedraggled, panting. Back cramping. Legs trembling. Feet angry.

I hauled my saggy ass up to the Rest House, and after a dramatic collapse in the lobby (one of my theatrical finest), followed by a shower and a brief snooze, I was temporarily revived. Balangoda proved to be surprisingly pleasant for an overcrowded, cluttered little town, with a you're-almost-in-a-city feel to it. I was invited to the family home of my Panamure friend, the smiling policeman Sangadasa, and was taken up a local hill to the Buddhist temple for a late afternoon worship, where views of the mountain ranges can't be beat. The panorama before you stretches from Sri Pada to Horton Plains and Haputale, but my favourite -- as was specially pointed out to me -- were two twin peaks, affectionately known by a local name.

My shortcut had brought me into the hills ahead of schedule. I was excited, as mountains always get my blood pounding and heart racing. There's something about them that calls to me, something that resonates with me in a way no other landscape does. The ocean? Eh. I can take it or leave it. But the mountains? Mountains lift me. For all my huffing and puffing and fainting as I climb them, there is no where else I would rather be. And well, here I am...

Where Are You Going?

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Thimbolketiya to Pallebedda-Badanamure
Kilometers: 25.46 Elevation gain/loss: 629/527

Where are you going?" "Ko-hed-duh yaa-nawa?"

Sometimes it comes out a little grammatically challenged as,
"Where are you?" or
"Where you go?" or
"How are you go?"

or simply just,
"Where?"

A command of the English language is not a requisite to starting a conversation.

There's no getting away from it. Every encounter opens with this question. Sri Lankans are a curious lot and you have to give an answer, they want an answer, though what they will do with this information is lost on me. As you pass a stranger on the street, they'll ask. From out of a kitchen dooi, even before you can see the face calling out to you, you'll hear it. Sometimes they will shout it out to you from the window of a passing car as it speeds away, with no possibility of hearing your reply. Many foreigners here, tourists and residents alike, find the constant curiosity, the incessant questioning, to be intrusive, annoying, even harrassing. But I get it. There is no offence meant. Neither do they really care where you are actually going. It's their own version of "Howzit going? Whachcha up to?" You expect a reply, of course, but really are not that interested in how it truly is going. A simple "Ya' know, that way." will do the job just fine.

I rarely tell the truth, as just about any plausible answer will suffice, and my true destinations usually cause too many further questions. I'll name a the immediate next town, whatever that may be, or better yet a local Buddhist temple showing up on my GPS and give that as my stopping point. As long as I give these replies, heads will nod, as if to say "yes right, carry on then." It's when I tell the truth, that I'm walking twenty or thirty kilometers, or more incomprehensibly that I'm walking to Jaffna, that I open myself up to a barrage of further questions.

As I trudge along the roads I get many reactions, but shock tops the list. Followed by complete disbelief. A foreigner. A woman. Alone. Sometimes in a part of Sri Lanka that rarely sees a white face. And to top it off, she's WALKING, pack hanging heavy off her back. "PINE? Pine yaa-nawa?" "ON FOOT? You're going on foot?" Why?, they want to know. Is something wrong? Have I run away from my guest house? Has my car broken down? Did an unscrupulous driver abandon me on the road? Am I very, very lost? Could I be searching for a bus?

Nope. I'm walking by choice.

I get raised eyebrows, waves, thumbs up, the occasional tongue stuck out at me. Every now and then, I'll pass someone whose gob is literally hanging open, as if he has just seen a space alien with forehead tentacles or a three-headed monkey. The trucks peahaps win the contest for friendliness with horn-blows, flashing headlights and salutes, followed closely by the tuk-tuks. The scooters that honk their little horns invariably just sound like they're squeezing out constricted farts, but they mean well. Sometimes I think I'll cause an accident as an entire family piled onto a scooter corkscrews their heads back to ensure they actually have actually seen what they think they have seen, driver not excepted. Village children, shy but wide-eyed, excited and afraid, will peek fascinatedtfrom behind whatever they can hide -- mother's skirt, fence posts, doorframes. Women smile, mostly, or call out from their gardens. The older they are, they more likely they are just to grunt. Men are harder to read, mostly friendly but occasionally slightly disturbing. I've learned when to make eye contact, when to offer a "good morning", and when to look down and just keep walking.

Sometimes, I'll get called over to have a coconut cut from the tree just for me, or invited to share a cup of tea or have a hopper, the Sri Lankan rice pankake. I'll get endless offers for rides, on everything from tractors to bicycles, motorbikes to vans, and unlimited, unsolicited directions to the nearest bus stand. But most of all I get questions. There's no end to Sri Lankan curiosity.

Uda Walawe, Elephants Galore

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Panamure to Thimbolketiya
Kilometers: 15 Elevation gain/loss: 160/190

The plan was to follow my GPS through the fields and back lanes connecting Panamure to Thimbolketiya, thus avoiding the main roads and the crowded, noisy city of Embilipiitya. Sri Lankans, certainly once you are away from the tourist mad centres, are remarkably hospitable. Even if they have little, they will warmly offer you a coconut from their tree, or a meal, or any help you may need. So, when my plan to wander through unpaved footpaths became known, I soon had a full entourage of guides and guards to accompany me. My own posse! With me was the talkative and well-informed Kanangara, who at 70 years old, kept pace like a man half his age, and the delightful, smiling policeman Sangadasa, who struggled bravely to carry on despite being hindered by a foot injury.

We walked passed banana plantations and fields of vetiver, the area being too dry for much rice cultivation, crossing through impoverished villages where the men don't work (not much) and the children don't go to school (not much). There is little industry in the area, education seems pointless, and a general ennui seems to have settled over many of the people.

In no time, we had reached the main road and found our way to my guest house. Chosen only for its ideal location along the route, the inn turned out to be little more than the Sri Lankan equivalent of the cheap 'n dirty motel on the outskirts of town where you take your one-night-stand for a quick shag. Or worse. No glass in the windows, no lid on the toilet tank, cold water pouring directly from a shower pipe with no shower head, one dim 20watt bulb illuminating a dark room painted dark red. A single dubious sheet on the bed and pillowcases I didn't even want to touch with my bare hands. Nothing but the best for me, eh? My posse was suitably unimpressed and advised me to avoid all but minimal contact with the dodgy staff (lest they get the wrong idea).

I comforted myself with the fact that it was only for one night, and struck out for Uda Walawe, the national park famous for its elephant population of almost 500. Go to Yala National Park, deep in the south-east, and you can enjoy a great number of different species, most notably leopards. You, and the 400 other jeeps EACH DAY that roar along the dirt roads jostling for position, causing knotted traffic jams and scaring away all but the most intractable and inured buffalo. Uda Walawe, by contrast, has a wide open feel to it, much like the African savana, and you're unlikely to see another jeep during your entire trip.

Of course, you're not likely to see the full zoo of animals Yala offers, but if it's elephants you're after, you can't beat Uda Walawe. There's also a great little orphanage nearby, where they ready the elephants for rehabilitation in the park, and it's encouraging to see so many of the now-wild elephants (about 50) wearing radio collars, proof of their successful reintegration. At sunset, head for the reservoir, where large herds gather.

After a bumpy afternoon of being thrown and jostled about in the back of a jeep, photo-op happy and having had my pachyderm quota thoroughly satisfied, I returned to the flea-pit where I was to pass the night. I threw a clean sheet over the bed, ate a packet of bisquits for my dinner (deciding not to risk the dining room), and hightailed it outta there come first light of morning.

The Panamure Elephant

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Urubokka to Kaella to Panamure
Kilometers:  22  Elevation gain/loss: 375m/558m

Passing over from Urubokka, up the steep, pot-holed road that leads to Kaella and down again on the other side you would think you had crossed a much higher range of mountains or travelled much further. On one side, it's pissing down with rain and is the tropical green you'd expect. On the other side, it abruptly turns dry and brown, scrubby like the African bushland. The heat and sun were getting to me, so I was relieved to be met by my host for the night, the delightful Dan Diaz. Dan and Saman Ratnayake, a policeman in charge of safeguarding Sri Lanka's archeologial treasures, have, through a labour of love, overseen the building of a brand new, not-yet-in-any-guidebook monument to one of the country's beloved legends.

The famous story from 1950 tells of the Panamure elephant bull who, when his herd was captured by hundreds of men in a kraal (timber stockade), bravely fought to free himself and rescue the others, showing quite extraordinary determination. The cruel process of herding elephants into the kraal, tying, noosing and starving them to weakness, and eventually taming them for domestication had been commonplace for centuries, but this episode was to be the last. The unusually large bull, who was romantically involved with the herd matriarch, succeeded in breaking free and in his attempts to free his female, was shot and killed with a single bullet to the head. The news of this made its way into every newspaper of the day, his loyalty, spirit and courageousness leaving not a dry eye or untouched heart in the country. Public opinion ran high, agitation was widespread, and finally the Parliment declared the practice of elephant capture from that time onwards banned, ushering in a new and more humane chapter in Sri Lanka's human-wildlife relationship.

Head two kilometers due north from the tiny Panamure junction just outside Embilipitiya and you will come to the recently constructed monument honouring this story, complete with true-to-life sized elephant statue, an interesting little musuem housing displays and the actual skull of the bull, and a replica of the kind of kraal fencing used to pen the herd in.

Make sure to ask someone to show you the mineral-rich spring behind the museum, the lure that attracted the elephants to the site in the first place. Aparently, even in the worst drought the water lurks just beneath the surface of the soil and if you clap your hands, the spring will start to fountain forth out of the ground. Even on a day like the one I visited, with the nearby stream flowing and the spring full, you can clearly see the bubbling, rolling sands beneath the water churn all the more furiously with a sudden loud clap.

Worth a visit on your way back from Yala or Kataragama, for sure.

Psychos on the Road

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Deiyandara to Warapitiya Wewa to Urubokka
Kilometers:   23      Elevation gain/loss:   631m/314m

Patchy cloud as I set out from my homestay in Deiyandara, down a tiny road that doesn't show up on Google Earth towards Warapitiya Lake. It would drizzle and then suddenly burst into gorgeous light, illuminating the green around me into a whole new shade I have yet to find the name for, and then again threaten dark and ominous.

It's a 10 kilometer walk through rice paddies, fields and tiny villages to get to Warapitiya Wewa (Lake), mostly flat or low rolling hills, and I tried to make good time covering it, as I knew after reaching the reservoir it would be mercilessly up from there on in.

As I reached the lake, the clouds cleared and suddenly the sun was fully out. I was about half way up the grueling 600meter hill from Warapitiya to Heegoda,  slowed by the heat, the sun, the weight of my pack and the relentless steep climb, when a half-naked man came running up to me. As it turned out, this was the village's raving schizophrenic. Oh joy... He touched my feet and threw himself on the ground in front of me, but not in the respectful way you would do to some Himalayan yogi master, more in that "Hail! the Overlords from Planet Zorgon have descended!" kind of way. Disquieting to say the least. I skirted around him,  kept going and forgot about it until suddenly he was back, coconuts in hand, smashing them to smithereens at my feet (obviously, the due tribute Overlords require!), rolling on the ground, grabbing at my legs and blathering incomprehensibly. Hel-lo! Call the white van NOW! I was rescued by about 15 local men who came running to pull him off of me, everyone explaining reassuringly that he was indeed insane. Shaken, I doubled my speed and got the Hell outta there. Sorry, no pictures of the event... I was too busy hightailing it.

As you ascend, the views into the valleys down below become increasingly impressive, and by the time you reach Hulankanda things are starting to look seriously gorgeous. By then, the hills level out enough to allow you to look up from your feet, unbend the stooped-over posture the climb has demanded, and notice what a beautiful part of the world you're in.

The views lasted only a few kilometers before, once again, the skies opened and I was hiding under the big red tarp and umbrella the remainder of the way to Urubokka. There I passed the night at the family home of a friend, and went to sleep listening to the sound of rain drumming on the roof.

Drought and Rain

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Kirinda Puhulwella to Deiyandara
Kilometers: 18   Elevation gain/loss: 401m/373m

Most of Sri Lanka enjoys rolling power cuts for several hours a day. A country-wide drought has dried up the flow at the hydro-power plants that generate the majority of the island's electricity. You would not think there is a dfought to look at all the lush greenery which cloaks this part of the world, certainly not here in the south-west, where occasional sprinkles have deceptively kept everything looking verdant and tropical and fertile. Go east a few kilometers, or north, and the cracked earth, withered crops and empty riverbeds tell the real story. Monsoon has failed, barely smattering the country with a fraction of the usual rainfall and everyone is feeling the effects.

Now, after months of clear skies, and perfectly timed to the start of my walk, the weather has turned. Forecasts for the next 10 days say rain, rain and more rain. So much rain I thought the websites I was checking were having technical difficulties. But no. Satellite pictures showed huge swathes of cloud over the island, and report after report confirmed it would be a wet week ahead. As I bid my hosts goodbye and set out for Deiyandara, the morning mist turned to drizzle, drizzle to showers, and showers to proper, pissing-down storm. A fine sight I must have been walking along the road, a lone foreigner, hiding a Quasimodo hunchback (the Marquise de Sade backpack) under a giant red tarp poncho, soaking wet head of hair, feet sloshing in rivers of road runoff... Vanity has been completely abandoned on this walk!

The day was spent walking, then sheltering under overhanging roofs -- sometimes just diving, unannounced and uninvited, through a random stranger's front door to avoid the at-times horizontal rain -- and then plodding on again. I have since decided to coin a new term, a modification on "downpour". I am adding "sidepour" to my lexicon. Once you're wet though, you cannot get any wetter, and as my mother used to tell me, "You're not made of soap. You won't melt in the rain!"

Minutes before I had to stow my camera away from the deluge, I did happen upon one remarkable sight. A few kilometers just north of Hakmana, turn west at a small unmarked road from Denagama toward Deiyandara. The road curves around a picturesque, small dammed lake. By its shore, and spanning both sides of the road with its enourmous canopy, is a huge and amazing tree.

In its branches hundreds -- perhaps a thousand -- flying foxes, amassed in a giant swarm, more plentiful than the leaves of the tree itself, all hanging like ripe, brown, furry fruit, as the following close-ups will attest.

I know everyone expects the wildlife in Sri Lanka to be all about elephants and leopards, the poster children of the wildlife tourism department, but this was truly an unusual and impressive thing to behold. Perhaps it's not for you if you're the squeamish type, or have seen too many episodes of the Vampire Diaries, or don't relish the idea (or smell) of walking through guano, but if you're a lover of all nature and not just the cuddly kind, make your way here. And if you do go -- bonus -- you'll be the only one there.

Dondra Lighthouse -- the Very, Very Southern Tip

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Dondra to Kirinda Puhulwella
Kilometers: 25     Elevation gain/loss: 264m / 255m

A few kilometers from Matara, heading southeast through a quiet little neighbourhood of fishermen, you come to Sri Lanka's southernmost tip, marked by the Dondra Head Lighthouse. Gleaming white and looking surprizingly well maintained, it sits in a charming little garden of manicured lawns and shady palm groves. The 120 year old, colonial era lighthouse was imported brick by brick from England, and claims to be the tallest in Asia. Certainly, it holds that title in Sri Lanka itself, standing at 7 floors, 50 meters, and 196 steps to the top and does make for an impressive sight on an otherwise humble coast.

It is absolutely forbidden to climb to the top of the lighthouse, after an incident in which a visitor damaged a pricey piece of technical kit. Absolutely forbidden! Unless of course you pay 300 rupees ($2.40) to the little man at base, who gives you no ticket and then quickly disappears from view. Right, this is my starting point, I have to give it a go... The steep, narrow spiral staircase can easily make you dizzy, but you are well caged in and cannot get out at any of the floors on the way up. Passing the radio-guy who, bent over his monitors and radar dials doesn't say hello, I found myself starting to huff and puff.

How on earth am I going to walk 800 kilometers and climb 1000s of meters of mountains, when on Day 1, carrying nothing but a camera, I'm struggling up 50 meters of stairs? It was hot and stuffy inside the lighthouse. I wondered why the smileless, silent radio-guy didn't open one of the many windows, and instead sits in that clammy column of air all day. When you finally reach the little portal leading out to the viewing platform, Ah! what a gorgeous blast of cool wind! The views -- as imagined -- are stunning, tourism-board picture perfect, and look down onto idyllic little bathing spots, waves crashing onto rocks, palm-frond lined stretches of beach, and far out to sea. Head south from this point and you hit nothing, all the way to Antarctica.

During the 2004 tsunami, the lighthouse was damaged, although not badly, and today you'll be hard-pressed to see any evidence of it. After the first wave, when the sea receded out 100 meters leaving fish flopping on the sea floor, many people had gone down to scoop up the fish by hand. When the second wave came, the big one that caused most of the destruction, many of those people were able to take shelter inside the lighthouse, running up the steps to avoid the 22 foot wall of water that crashed into the island. While most of the island was badly battered by this wave, with huge death tolls, miraculously the Dondra village was mostly spared due to a slight uphill slope to the land.

From Dondra, I collected my backpack -- a purple monstrosity that weighs as much as a small Volkswagen -- and began the walk to Kirinda Puhulwella, 25 kilometers due north. The pack, designed by the Marquise de Sade, bit into every bone it touched, rubbed my flesh raw, and turned both shoulders and hips into tight, knotted bruises. My feet, already blistering, screamed at me "Screw you!" and threw themselves into hissy fits of acute plantar fasciitis and metatarsalgia. Ah, fun...

Kirinda Puhulwella is a nondescript little village, but I'll descript it nonetheless... Shabby, dusty, grimey. A few crowded shops clustered around a dirty bus station, mandatory mangey dogs yelping as they scoot away from under the wheels of approaching vehicles. Litter strewn by the roadside. Hot and sticky humid air. The sun blasting down on me, my glow-in-the-dark white skin quickly turning a glow-in-the-dark tomato red.

Or at least, this is what the village centre offered. I was met by a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, and whisked down a green and shady barely-2-meter-wide lane, to a hamlet a world away from the depressing centre of the village. Here, at the modest home of a charming young couple, Chathu and Wijerupa, I was offered such warm-hearted hospitality I was at once encouraged and began to think, "yeah... I think I may just be able to do this...''

Landmines, Amputees & the JJCDR

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Sri Lanka is home to 160,000 amputees. In the north, where civil war raged for almost 30 years, 75% of amputees are victims of landmines or are war wounded. Landmines have indiscriminately torn the limbs off of soldiers and children alike. Although the government is now trying to clear the landmines, it is a slow and tedious process. An estimated 90% of the amputees in this region lack proper prosthetic limbs. Deprived of their mobility, many are unable to work or provide for themselves and their families and are forced to beg in the streets, and children are unable to go to school.

This walk I'm doing is in aid of the Jaffna Jaipur Centre for Disability Rehabilitation, who provide high quality, lightweight and low-cost prostheses and orthotic devices to physically disabled people living in the Jaffna Peninsula (northern Sri Lanka) as well as physiotherapy and follow-up rehabilitation. The JJCDR also provides mobility devices, micro-credit loans to get adults back to work and student educational grants to differently-abled children. Its mission is to reach out to people with limb-loss and physical disabilities to empower them through a total rehabilitation program to restore not only their mobility, but also their dignity.

The cost of a below-knee prosthesis is only $180.  A wheelchair, $106. A monthly education grant to a disabled child is $3.80. It just takes a ridiculously small amount of money a lot to transform a life from one of dependence and poverty to that of independence and economic productivity. So I'm asking everyone... click on that DONATE link and help me raise funds for 100 prostheses.

Only a Month Left to Go

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Just over a month to go before I start this trek across Sri Lanka, and still sooooo much planning left to do. For six months, I've been pouring over maps and topographicals, scouring the internet for information on the tiniest villages, calculating distances and elevations, and exhausting every contact in my arsenal to slowly piece together an off-the-beaten-path route that is actually doable.

To get my body ready for this little endeavor, I get up at 4:30 in the morning, 4 days a week, to walk the 25km needed to toughen my feet and strengthen my legs and back. I aim for the tiniest footpaths and back roads I can find, heading away from the coastal village I live in, deep into the back countryside, where it's all rice fields and tea, coconut and rubber plantations, and slow meandering rivers. Blisters and plantar fasciitis have been my only -- but constant -- companions. And yet, despite the obvious pain, and ridiculous start time (I am NOT a morning person), and exhaustion, I am inspired and exhilarated with each new route I discover.

It's amazing how much there is to see when you get off the main roads, get off the tarred roads, and walk into this stunning countryside. The green is shocking, lush, and omnipresent. Walking is slow enough, and silent enough, to sneak up on the wildlife. Every morning I'll spot mongoose, langur monkeys, peacocks, water monitors, blue kingfishers and green parrots, macaques and lizards, flying foxes and snakes, frogs, buffalo... Stay on the main roads and buses and trucks will belch soot into your face, and scabby-looking concrete block buildings and litter mar the view. Turn down the path that looks like it's definitely not the obvious route, and wow...