Ella to Nuwara Eliya

Breakfast was sumptuous again, comprising rolls with sambol, roti, toast with butter and jam, plus banana, papaya and pineapple. I declined the offered omelette.

I shared a tuk-tuk to the station with the Dutch ladies. They had sponsored kids in Sri Lanka many years ago, and were going to visit one of them, now grown up, in Kandy.

The platform filled as the train approached. The tourists were mostly in the first and second class carriages. There were a few Germans in my carriage. Sri Lanka is popular with Europeans as the time zone difference is manageable at 4-½ hours. The ride was enjoyable though it was hard to obtain scenic shots as vistas were distant. Tea plantations were everywhere.

The train was a blue Chinese made one and adequate. The difference between first and second class consisted merely in the comfort of the seats. For once in my trip I didn't sweat on public transport. I tracked our progress on my GPS and the line was tortuous.

Besides plantations there were also villages. Now and then I spotted villagers clutching mobile phones. Wireless technology has leapfrogged the need for provisioning landlines.

The line doesn't run into Nuwara Eliya, but stops at Nanu Oya station. Before engaging a tuk-tuk for the 8 km ride, I found that I could only get a third class ticket for the next leg to Kandy as other classes were sold out. The following leg on the service I wanted to Colombo could not be reserved. I would have to chance it on the day.

Richmond Inn was probably a colonial guesthouse from the look of it. Sri Lankans run it now of course. The post office also has the colonial look. I wondered what the British expats did after independence in 1948. Would some of them have had difficulties adjusting to a cold England they had never lived in before? I had read that some settled in Australia. In those days the world was far less connected and it was a great leap of faith to settle in a country one knew little about.

The rest of the day will be in the next post.