Rail Trip

Train number 1029 pulled out of Colombo Fort railway station right on time at 3.15 pm bound for Kandy, Twenty minutes later, inexplicably it ground to a halt in a jungleoid area where the air was so gaggingly foetid it might have been the place where skunks go to die. It was a smell you only get in the tropics - think rotten pineapple and goronzola cheese. Thankfuly it hadn't broken down there and ten minutes later off we wwnt again. I had a seat in the "first class" observation saloon. It had large windows in the front through which we were observed by passing Sri Lankans. Other than that, it was the usual falling to bits subcontinental railway carriage. Still, it was doing better than its Indian counterpart, which would have been dirty and falling to bits.

We rattled along now, through villages and railway sidings - British built mostly, with painted park style benches, canteens, ladies and gentlemen's retiring rooms and charmingly decorated with hanging plants and fire buckets.

Coconut palms, bananas and paddy fields gradually gave way to pines and flowering trees and areas of cleared land; rich grazing for fat happy cows.
I saw a boy splashing through his paddy after a buffalo that had made a dash for freedom,or maybe it was just bored. A procession of sari-clad ladies holding umbrellas against the hot sun flashed smiles up at the train. Kids ran to the tracks to wave and yell. We zipped past markets
and monasteries and lakes full of lotus, jack fruit and mango trees, their branches laden with ripe fruit, telegraph poles covered in a twisted tangle of vine. One lonely sweeper in an acre of garbage slowly swinging a switch broom. Bougainvillea and frangipani everywhere.

















After 2 1/2 hours we reached Kandy, Sri Lanka's second city and at 500 metres, significantly cooler than steamy Colombo.