Month: February 2018

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The most beautiful train ride in the world?

Feb 27, 2018, Ella, Sri Lanka, Rain on and off, Tuesday

Yesterday, we took 6.5 hour train to Ella from Kandy because it is considered the most beautiful train ride in the world. David preferred to take a taxi but I insisted. However, I realized I made a wrong decision when I saw so many travelers waiting on the platform. Luckily David survived, but was not squeezed to a piece of paper. We were separated by crowd of people to different cars for whole trip. I was worried a lot about him as he never experienced this in his life and he was taking a giant luggage and 2 big bottles of water, the worst thing is he does not know how to be aggressive to survive in this situation. However, just after 1.5 hours, he sent me a text message and told me being looked at as a senior people has some benefit: a local young guy gave his seat to him, later I knew this guy stood for more than one hour before getting off. This is not the first time I feel how nice the local people are.

Before finding a seat, I talked with a couple of young Chinese travelers. It was very nice to know how younger Chinese think about the world and their life. I added them as friends on my WeChat later. One girl who is from Shanghai and thinking about studying overseas for her Masters degree is traveling with her boyfriend. She has to take 3 hours to arrive her office and another 3 hours back to home, which surprised me. But I can tell she is an independent, open minded girl. Another girl is from Yiwu, where there is the world famous small goods wholesale market in the South of China. She is doing some kind of export business. She told me many Chinese wholesalers got deceived by foreign buyers, that shocked me too. I asked why, she told me they are desperate to get the business as there is too much competition.

To be honest, 6.5 hours train is very very long. Since so many people squeezed into the car, white, Asian, local, old young, baby…we are physically very close and mentally bored. What we could do? At that moment, I suddenly thought of a reality show called Big Brother. People are put into a big house and see what will happen.

I not only interacted with Chinese people, I talked a little bit with a senior guy from Holland. He has done business internationally and he still got some cultural shocks in Asian countries in his trip. I asked what they are and he only told me people are so poor in Vietnam…apparently he has some concern to talk about Sri Lanka. Finally I got a seat after 12 o’clock. After sitting down, a local woman sat face to face to me and she smiled at me a lot. I saw her beautiful dress and a gold decoration between her two eyebrows. I smiled at her back and told her it is very beautiful and she seemed understand and bobbled her head. I asked her if the gold decoration made her hurt. I do not know if she understood me. She just made a friendly smile and bobbled her head again. Another woman smiled at me too and she told me her family is in Ella and later when I went to restroom, she agreed to take care of my seat without hesitation. Later, a baby girl who looks like only a few months, was passed to the beautiful dress lady who was sitting face to face to me. The girl has a pair of big eyes, so bright, as big as her nose, full of curiosity. She looked at me and another white guy standing near us. She is so cute and the white guy started to smile and blinking his eyes to her and she seemed very excited and burst into laughter and jumps. She was so cute. I thought about taking a picture of her but I did not feel right. It seemed the white guy and the young girl understand each other so well just with facial expression. They made us happy too. The guy suddenly took his cellphone out and showed that to the girl, it was the selfie mode, the girl reached to see the cellphone and she saw herself, her eyes became super big with surprise…that made people around her burst into laughter.

At times, I felt not only in our car, at another side of the car, some local girls are singing with somebody playing drums. Whenever our train passed a tunnel, people, I think mostly local, cheered and made echos, then some foreign travelers follow as well. It was so fun, of course we have seen the beautiful water fall and tea gardens too. However, the international interaction is the best part for me, at moments, I felt we are the same, even thought our skin colors are different, the squeezed train brought us together and made us closer. I would call it happy international train ride, but not the most beautiful train ride in the world, but it is a kind of beauty when you see the smiles, laughs, and interaction in this train. At times, I felt it is not worthwhile to stand 6.5 hours for this train ride and the view was not that beautiful at all, but at the end, in the sense of human interaction, I believe this is one of the most beautiful train rides in this world.

Yanmei

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Train to Ella

Our next destination was Ella. Yanmei wanted to take a train, I wanted to hire a car. When we first arrived in Kandy on the train we tried to buy first class tickets to Ella, but they said they were completely sold out for the next 30 days. That made me want to take a car. The drive is also 3.5 hours versus 7 hours for the train. However the train ride is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the world. Finally I agreed to the train. Since 1st class was sold out we had to buy 2nd class, which has no reserved seating, is not air conditioned, and doesn’t sell out, which means they cram as many people on as buy tickets. From Colombo to Kandy 2nd class was half empty, so I was hopeful it would be like that. The tickets were 240 rupees each ($1.55), not bad!

Things didn’t look good at the platform for my half empty scenario.

A guy offered to “find” us seats for a 4000 rupee bribe. We did not accept. Yanmei especially hates corruption like this, and I felt we would probably screw someone else by taking this offer.

As an aside Yanmei has bought so much stuff on this trip that she was up to 4 carry-ons and her small roller. Also the airlines seem much stricter this trip compared to 2015, they make me check my backpack almost every flight and Yanmei’s roller too, even though they both easily fit in the overheads. The only time I had to check my backpack in 2015 was on one regional flight in Eqypt in a light jet. I think it might be a way for the airlines to earn more money since they all charge extra for checking bags now. So in Malaysia I bought a full-size roller suitcase. I hate traveling with big bags, but if we are checking stuff every flight anyway we might as well consolidate into less bags.

So now we’re standing on the crowded platform, and everyone has a backpack and I have a massive roller (and my backpack). Our plan was for Yanmei to quickly jump on with her carry-on and try to get us seats while I boarded and stowed the heavy luggage. That plan quickly fell apart when the train arrived. She rushed to the front of the car, while I boarded the back where I knew there was a shelf for big bags. Luckily there was enough space to fit the big bag there. Obviously there were no seats near me so I started pushing forward to where I saw Yanmei get on, thinking she might be saving a seat for me. Partway up the car too many people were pushing on from every direction and I got stuck and couldn’t move through the crowd. Worse, I hadn’t stowed my backpack which was heavy with a few 1.5 liter bottles of water, and now all the space was full. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Yanmei had seen me get on at the back and decided not to get on at the front and tried to follow me, but this caused her to get stuck behind many other people and thus she was one of the last to board. She couldn’t move either and got stuck in the space between two cars. When I was moving forward to find her I was actually moving away from her.

Now it was a SNAFU. We were separated with no seats on a crowded train, it was 9am and already getting hot, no air conditioning, I had all the water, and she had all the food. This was going to be a long 7 hours. We eventually got in contact with each other using text messages. She was able to rest a bit by sitting on her roller.

Some people near me sat on the floor, which really clogged things up, since people were still trying to move. There were food vendors and stuff pushing through. Once I got a somewhat comfortable place to stand I didn’t want to risk moving and ending up in a worse spot, and I knew Yanmei didn’t have a seat either.

After about an hour Yanmei squeezed her way forward to see me and use the toilet. She told me she met some Chinese tourists and they were watching her luggage. She soon headed back to her spot. After about an hour and a half a very nice local man offered me his seat. At first I refused, but he said he was getting off soon (the train was stopping every 15-20 minutes) so I agreed. I’m not sure why he picked me to offer his seat, there were lots of other white tourists around, but I was grateful. I then felt bad when he didn’t get off and stood for over an hour. I tried to text Yanmei that I got a seat if she wanted a turn sitting, but by then my phone had no service.

A while later she came pushing forward again and wanted food and water. I thought she had all the food but she said she couldn’t reach her bag anymore to get it. I remembered I had a couple of chocolate bars in my bag, so I gave those to her. She said she didn’t want to sit, so she headed back with a couple of Mars bars and a bottle of water. Later I found out her new Chinese friend was feeling faint so she wanted to take the chocolate back for her. A little while later when cell service was back she texted me she got a seat too. Phew. It was also cooling off outside which made it much more bearable inside with all the doors and windows open. So it didn’t turn out as bad as it could have.

Both she and I had seats on the same side which was the “bad” side for scenery. I was just happy to have a seat and it was still pretty nice. We passed numerous tea plantations as you can see from the video.

Finally made it to Ella by about 3:30pm. Although it was not the final stop, most people got off there. Was it the most beautiful train ride in the world? I would say no, although it was better than I expected with the mountain side views. There is a lot of stiff competition in the beautiful train ride category. My favorite that I’ve been on is probably Zurich to Geneva. Another contender is the Flåm in Norway which we wanted to try in 2015, but it was fulled booked.

Ella is a relatively small town, with about 45,000 people, but it has become a popular tourist destination since the civil war here ended in 2009. They didn’t have the infrastructure to handle the demand, so now it seems like everyone near the train station has converted their house into a restaurant, lodge or both. There were lots of signs for home stays and rooms along the road. We’d actually booked a hotel instead of an Airbnb. It was a newly constructed boutique hotel off the main strip a bit with about 8 rooms.

View from our room to the dining patio.

David

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Kandy, Sri Lanka

The day after Sigiriya it was raining, so we took it easy. Yanmei did some laundry.

In the afternoon it stopped raining, so we decided to go out and look around Kandy. It was about a hour walk to downtown so we were going to take a tuk tuk, but then Yanmei said “let’s take a bus”. The buses seem to come about ever 60 seconds which is great. We hopped on and it was 25 rupees, which works out to about 8 cents each. The bus took us to the central market.

After that we walked to Lake Kandy.

We did some shopping in the downtown area, then walked over to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, which is the most important Buddhist temple in the area, it has a tooth from Buddha.

We were templed out so we didn’t go in, but there was a procession of girls and women holding a rope and going in as we watched. The above picture is only the entrance gate, not the temple itself.

We headed back for another home cooked Sri Lankan dinner.

David