Advertisement
Published: October 7th 2011
Edit Blog Post
We took a nauseatingly windy but utterly gorgeous bus ride up into the hills here, in Nuwara Eliya, a sort of Little England, in total tea country. Tea is grown in just about every patch of hill here, Ceylon being the former tea-capital of the world in the days of empire (I think India grows more tea now). Although it shows the world's disturbing obsession with tea, it is very, very pretty. You can see people picking tea, little kids and families scampering up and down the hills. It tends to look a little more organic than most large-scale crops, with a sort of patchwork of fields, since the landscape is pretty rugged here. Nuwara Eliya has little white English village-looking houses, a golf course, a race track, and some other curiosities. We spent a night there and had our first good pot of tea since arriving in Sri Lanka. You wouldn't think it, but until that point we had had horrible tea experiences here. Although the tea itself is good quality, everyone makes it with tap water, which not only tastes awful but almost certainly hasn't been boiled long enough to kill off whatever lurks in it. The result is
that, cleanliness aside, no matter how much sugar or heated full-cream reconstituted milk (which is a problem in and of itself) you add to it, the tea tastes a bit like sludge. But our guest house in Nuwara Eliya made tea with bottled water, and it made our day.
The next day we headed to the train station to go to Ella. On our way out the door we ran into one of the guys who works at our hotel, and he got us a lift with a van that was going to the station to pick up some tourists. We chatted with the tour guide for a while, and he gave us some advice about where to go, how to get from place to place, and which side of the train to sit on. It was very pleasant, he was a really nice guy, and the whole thing was yet another example of how wonderful and welcoming a lot of the Sri Lankan population is. Thanks tour guy!
The train ride itself was one of the most beautiful and pleasant rides I've ever taken anywhere. We started at a fairly high elevation and continued that way, so that sometimes
we were at the top of a steep drop with the world spread out below us (it reminded me a bit of paragliding, actually) and sometimes we were at the bottom of tall cliffs. Often it was both at once. The countryside is a beautiful mixture of cultivated and natural, with tea plantations carpeting everything, even steep slopes, in deep cooked-spinach green, trees popping up here and there unimpeded (we think they are there to help prevent erosion, since a lot of tea is planted on really steep hillsides), orange and purple and white flowers on vines and bushes, terra cotta red roads, corrugated iron roofs, the occasional pristine stupa, and throughout it all people, cows, dogs, birds, and our brick red train chugging along. We both took up residence in doors at opposite ends of one car, hanging onto the railings and leaning out to watch the countryside rolling past. It was spectacular.
Things I have learned about riding trains in Sri Lanka (advice for newbies):
1) Seat-saving is completely acceptable. You can choose a seat, sit your butt in it for about 2 seconds, then get up and wander around leaving only a scarf or even a plastic
bag with your chocolate bar wrapper in it to guard your space, and no one will shoot you dirty looks. We abandonned our seats within about 20 minutes of leaving the station and never went back to them, and no one tried to take them. The locals do the same. For example, we were on a packed bus, standing with our packs on because there was no room to put them down, and the bus stopped for a meal break. Most people got off for a bite, secure in the knowledge that their seat would be there when they got back.
2) Safety regulations? What safety regulations? You can hang out of doorways or windows and watch the world go by. Doors are always left wide open, and everyone, locals and tourists alike, is fascinated by the view.
3) While hanging out of a door or window, if someone ahead of you sticks their head out particularly far, it means they are going to spit. Duck back inside double quick. Learn from my mistake.
4) There is an amazing amount of undergrowth in the Sri Lankan countryside, and although it seems that every few kilometers there is a team of
people cutting it back or doing other maintenance work, the stuff grows really really fast. If it looks like those beautiful flower vines are so close you could just about touch them, then they probably are. You will get whipped in the face.
5) Sri Lankans young and old seem by and large to be fascinated with tourists, cameras, and waving at people. If they realize you have a camera, every single child (and some adults as well) on your side of the train will be hanging out of the window and waving at you every time the tracks curve enough to see you. It makes for some great pictures if you can hold the camera steady enough.
6) Take trains in Sri Lanka. 2nd class is cheap, comfortable, and much smoother than the bus. And the views are breathtaking.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.182s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 10; qc: 45; dbt: 0.137s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb