We arrived Sri Lanka around 6pm, navigated customs and immigration, and the duty free gauntlet where they sell the usual stuff plus, strangely, appliances including refrigerators.
Then the scrum for a SIM card and finally finding our driver for the one hour trip to our crash pad in Colombo. I say crash pad because we were only planning to be there for about 12 hours so that we could catch the Tea Train.
Sri Lanka is a challenging place to traverse. It’s so small that there aren’t any scheduled domestic flights. The train service to the interior is 1x or 2x daily plus a night train. Which leaves driving. There is only one expressway in the country that parallels the west coast from Galle to the airport north of Colombo. Every other road is either a single lane each way or just a single lane.
This means travel times are astronomical. Traveling just 75 miles can easily take 3-4 hours.
Because everyone is impatient they turn the center stripe into a third lane that is used by either direction. This results in harrowing near head-on collisions about every 5-10 minutes. After about 30 of these you start to get numb to it and just hope for the best.
It is because of this that experienced travelers will tell you to hire a driver and make it a big vehicle for your safety. So that’s what we did, and we arranged in advance to have a driver at our Colombo hotel at 6:30 with a van. What we got was a very nice driver in a small Toyota sedan. So it turned into an issue very quickly which resulted in the tour operator scrambling to find a van.
Unfortunately we were on a clock. The train we were trying to catch leaves Colombo at 5:55am and winds its way into the interior. From Colombo to our destination it would have been a 10 hour train ride and that was not something we wanted to do. So we had planned to drive to Nanu Oya, which is where the “Tea Train” portion of the route begins. That is a 2 1/2 hour ride but meant we had to get to Nanu Oya by 12:45pm to catch that train. There is a later train at 3pm but it is less desirable because the last hour of the ride is in darkness due to sundown.
Unfortunately we only had about an hour of slush time built into the schedule. All indications were that it was a 4 hour drive. But now we had this vehicle issue. It ultimately took the company two hours to get us a van so that meant we were going to miss our 12:45 train. So we had to compromise and take the later one.
Ultimately it took us 6 hours with no stops to get there but we made it! There are three classes of travel on the train – 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Your impulse is to go straight to the top, especially since 1st Class costs about $6. But resist that and buy 2nd Class.
The difference is that 1st is in a sealed compartment – air conditioning and not so clean windows that will mar your photos. 2nd class has open windows and because you’re in the mountains its a lovely cool breeze. Yes, it comes with noisy families and general mayhem but it’s ultimately a better, more authentic experience.
“Hey Mohammed, how much to give up your seat?”
What they don’t necessarily tell you is that you may not get a seat and will have to stand the whole way. Ugh. But we’ve come this far and weren’t about to be denied. As the train comes to a stop at the station there is a mad scramble to get onto the train and secure a seat. We were lucky and got one next to a young man sitting at the window.
I took the seat and Jeff was standing over me as I turned to the young man and said “hi, I’m Alex, what’s your name?”. “Mohammed” he replied. “Hey Mohammed, how much to give up your seat?”. “Mmm, no”. “How about US$5?”. “Mmm, no”. “How about US$10?”. “Mmm, ok”. So I grabbed $10 out of my wallet, handed it to him, and he jumped up and ran off leaving us two seats together next to the window on the right side (better side) of the train. Sheer luck.
Here’s our new best friend Mohammed. Standing up. Hah.
The hassle to get to the train was totally worth it. It is said to be one of the world’s most beautiful train rides and it lived up to that. The reason it is called the Tea Train is because it winds through tea plantations that are built into the hills and mountains of interior Sri Lanka.
And more
And more
Parts of the ride pass through a national park.
We saw dozens of waterfalls. Right now Sri Lanka is between monsoons, they have two. But there still is enough rainfall for the waterfalls to gush out of the mountains with force.
The train just winds its way across through the mountains at a very leisurely pace.
We passed countless tea plantations along the way.
And about half way through we went up into the clouds. This was completely unexpected and certainly not what you’d expect in Sri Lanka. And it got chilly!
Here is a short video of what we experienced on the train.
Soon enough we arrived in Ella. Ella will be our aerie in the mountains at the Greenland Estate which is a working tea plantation.
