SRI LANKA

Sri Lanka

The view down from the coach edging up the hillside in Sri Lanka was not for the faint hearted. Through the verdant vegetation were glimpses of a stunning landscape, but below was a fingers' width of crumbling road between us and the prospect of disaster.

It was here, as we made a stop-start ascent into the heart of the island's tea growing uplands, that the two boys first appeared.

Brandishing bouquets of bright blossoms they seemed at first to be simply local people like those who'd greeted us everywhere with waves and warm smiles. But a certain desperation marked them apart.

They were about nine or ten and, as we climbed, they re-appeared after every sharp bend, scrambling up the vertiginous and densely vegetated hillside to outpace our coach. "If we buy flowers from these children it will encourage them when they should be in school, " explained our guide. "If they do not study then they will not be able to work when they are older".

But the fifth or sixth appearance of the truants finally halted us. The passengers, a group of nearly 40 teachers and companions on the first TES sponsored: "Half term Travel Club " trip clamoured to reward their persistence.

Perhaps it was encouraging truancy - something the teachers would hardly countenance back home - but here some more basic impulses were at play. A collection produced a few hundred rupees for their flowers. They might be short on schooling, but not Sri Lankan street smarts.

The children were among a small handful of ordinary Sri Lankan's encountered by the party. They suggested an undercurrent otherwise little felt from the comfortable and conditioned containment of our journey - a tightly planned itinerary offering vivid glimpses of central Sri Lanka's main tourist sights.

We saw scant evidence of the deeper troubles of this nation especially the quiescent ethno-religious conflict between the majority Sinhalese Buddhist population and minority Hindu Tamils. Nearly 20 years of conflict have claimed some 65,000 lives, displaced a million people and driven a tidal wave of Tamil refugees overseas. Is it done with? No one is sure for while roadside gun emplacements are now largely unmanned we weren't taken to the more troubled Tamil dominated northern part of the island.

Our guide Sunil explained this "difficulty" at length during our ride amid the sun drenched tea plantations..

Here a different group of Tamils - imported here from India during the Raj for the backbreaking task of tea picking - live in meagre housing projects known as "the lines " on estates with largely Scottish names. We passed one called Dunsinane.

The complexities of Sri Lankan politics were just one of many learning curves to be had on this zigzag journey - seven days beginning and ending in a tiring and tiresome encounter with Sri Lankan Airlines .

Post mortems are underway to fine tune away the few problems encountered in time for the next trip in spring. Some, like one teacher's close encounter with a leech, mosquito avoidance strategies, the unseasonably wet weather and hot water bottles in one mountain hotel to ward of the chill, will doubtless be warmed over as travellers tales.

But the main complaints of too much time on the bus and too little encountering Sri Lanka in the raw - or enjoying the luxury of our hotel stops - need addressing.

Sri Lanka is about the same size as Ireland, but the slowness of travel makes it seem larger. Its roads are ragged and littered with the ever present hazards of standing cows, sleeping dogs, roadworkers - including women in hard hats and saris - and the ubiquitous motorised tricycle taxis, mostly unlicensed, which offer harum scarum rides through red traffic lights in city and along jostling rural roads.

For this autumn half term week, it was the turn of the teachers to join a classroom on the road for lessons about multiculturalism, politics, the environment, religion and more.

So how much can a group of jet-lagged teachers learn in a few hectic days of cultural and environment sightseeing in what was - for a some - their first taste of a developing Asian nation?

Most enjoyed the expedititon - the handful of veterans of earlier similar trips , newcomers and the few simply along for a holiday. But some experienced culture shock.

One teacher, for instance, sat in the tea room at the Glen Tee plantation expressing dismay at the conditions endured by Tamil workers. Earlier our guide had explained as we passed their homes, eliciting more of the familiar friendly greetings. that: "although they are poor they are not necessarily unhappy."

Perhaps this was due, he surmised, to the intractable reality of the Hindu caste system, though he said this also was a significant source of Sri Lanka's social and political problems. He added, provocatively, that perhaps, Hinduism and the dominance of Buddhism here explained why this part of the world was less developed than the West.

It was a dense schedule. On offer was wonderful food ( fiery Sri Lankan curry for breakfast, lunch and dinner if you were sufficiently bold ); visits to Buddhist treasures including Kandy's Temple of the Tooth and Dambulla with painted and sculptured Buddhas in five astonishing cave temples haunted by monkeys; a trip to an elephant orphanage and to track the beasts in the wild and nature visits at dawn by foot and boat. Other popular highlights were a visits to spice plantation, Kandy's botanical gardens and the astonishing rock fortress of Sigiriya (complete with Ex London Underground spiral staircase to help ascend its rockface) with a finale of a few beach and pool hours, gift shopping and Ayurvedic massages.

So what did the teachers cull from the trip apart from jetlag and bites, sunburns and souvenirs?

Ian, a deputy head of a Leeds secondary school, was exhilarated by much of what he saw and said this and an earlier trip to India had provided him with ample material for several of the RE lessons he has to run back home.

A primary head from a Wiltshire village, on her honeymoon, gathered enough material for six weeks of literacy lessons and her husband, a classroom assistant, promised that the sarong he'd acquired - worn by many Sri Lankan men - would soon be worn to school (though not, he admitted, to his local pub).

A clutch of primary teachers learnt the skills of slipping into saris - and promised to host into assemblies back home in the distinctive Sri Lankan version of the elegant Asian gown.

So by now anecdotes and images of exotic flora and fauna, of elephants bathing in the river, of Buddhist temples will and the strange otherness of this nation, have made their appearance in classrooms across Britain. The ongoing and deeper lessons derived from this trip will continue to unfold.