An eight hour ride on a tin bus pumping Sri Lankan's tropical pop music swept us away from the southern coast's dramatic sandy beaches and into the heart of the countryside.

A tip from an Australian couple had led us to an eco-community near Saliyagama , in the centre of Sri Lanka.

The place itself, dreamed up and created by the very charismatic 34-year-old Chaminda, consisted of five or six little mud huts for bedrooms, one big hut for the kitchen, 40 chickens and cockerels, about the same amount of goats and cows and lots of wild animals including poisonous snakes, lizards the size of a small dog, cats and monkeys.

My first challenge was to help build a new hut, which faced the long golden strands making up the rice paddies and was neighbour to a little pool of emerald steaming water that was always useful to wash the sticky mud off.

The aim of the job was to make balls out of the pre-mixed mushy mud and clay, throw at speed to the first layer of already-positioned clay balls and hope the missiles stick. Many did not.

This messy job was very fun and with the sun setting and a small friendly group of young travellers and one older German woman on vacation, I was basking in the secret location's charm.

That night we washed in the river, a little scared of what lay inside the cloudy cool water.But it was the next day the real work began. Bad timing meant we arrived just as the first sickles, captain-hook-shaped tools, were being picked up to cut this rice. I'll never think of the snow- coloured grains of carbohydrate in the same way again.

This was the hardest thing I think my back has ever taken. With the intense sun beaming on top of us, we cut field after field, donned in long shirts to stop the strands from ripping our skin. Water pulled using a bucket from a nearby well was my only relief from the pounding heat.

Eight hours of cutting, carrying and wishing I was dead...anything to stop this work.

We did have welcomed breaks throughout the day including a warmed up milk rest which we drank with lots of added sugar and then two painful hours later we feasted on freshly made vegetables flavoured with chillies and served with none other than rice.

That night when I went to sleep in my little hut on a small mud surfaced covered by a thin bamboo sheet, all I could see was the great long green rice strands.

Thankfully the next day Chaminda set us off in the garden making little flower beds ready for chilli seeds. I was so happy not to be picking rice that the relief was near to ecstasy.

On the fourth and final day I milked a golden coloured boney cow at the burst of dawn. She didn't like me and I couldn't blame her. After five minutes of milking, the skilful animal managed to knock my bucket over despite her back legs being tied up. Although it meant I had to start again I was impressed with her revenge on me for stealing her milk away from her nearby calf.

This was also the day I had my first motorbike ride. With no helmet and clinging to a full milk churn I let the green flat landscape roll by as we crossed mazes of dirt tracks.

On our last night we watched the sun go down on a sky-scraping rock peering above the leafy farm. Then we were treated to a banquet of fruit including limes and papayas.

With blisters on our hands and burnt backs we said our farewells to the community that had become our family in a matter of days. Living and working with people in such close quarters meant we got to know everyone really well.