Lemme tell ya about Nuwara Eliya

Wednesday (?- getting hard to keep track of days of the week) morning wake up, pack up, and head out through the hills. It seems like every stop on this trip brings us to a totally different landscape, and this is one of the more dramatic shifts. We leave the hot, windy plains and rice paddies of Kataragama and start heading up into the mountains, where the jungle continues, but now had sort of a different character; a little more lush, green, and wet. The air gets cooler and we end up switching off the ac and opening the windows (we splurged for a car for this ride, and it was worth it).

We arrive at Nuwara Eliya, which is an old cool-weather retreat from the colonial days, and has some weirdly English features. We're staying in a nice little bed and breakfast outside of town, with a great view over the surrounding valley, which is full of houses and neat, geometric patches of vegetables.

We spent the afternoon in the town, had tea and a nice walk around the botanical gardens. In the gardens we somehow got roped into this crazy tour by one of the gardeners (I think he expected a tip, but I played the clueless tourist), who showed us a bunch of rare and interesting plants, including one with leaves that smelled like Tiger Balm and one with a flower that smelled like banana candy. The gardens are well-manicured and beautiful (mom and Rani's mom, you would love this place). It feels like a cool but sunny fall day, which is a nice change from the heat of the lowlands.

Huge, old cactus

Banana-smelling flower, lime, Sri Lanka orchid

We had pizza in a roadside shack and some drinks in an "English pub", then back to the room for some rest. Up at 530 for a long, cold tuk-tuk ride up further into the mountains to Horton's Plains.

These are windy, misty highlands that look a little like Scotland probably looks, but with more tropical vegetation. An hour hike out to World's End, a cliff with fabulous views all the way out to the coast, where we had a little picnic breakfast. Another couple of hours hiking back, getting hotter, and getting pretty tired, and then another long ride back into town for lunch.

Rest in the room, dinner, sleep, pack up, and out the door to the train station.

Cool wooden time table for the trains

We took the train because it sounded like a good thing to do, a good way to see the countryside, a relaxing way to travel. It was a good way to see the landscape, but not very relaxing and we traveled for 6 hours at night, which negates the whole scenery aspect of things. Anyway, at the first train station, we spent our time waiting for the train watching a pack of stray dogs fight over a pig's head on the tracks, then got on and traveled three hours to Polgahawela, which is just a railroad junction town, not a place expecting tourists. Gone are the signs in English and the occasional, somewhat comforting glimpses of other white people. We spent about 5 minutes looking around outside the train station before deciding just to get snacks at the canteen in the station, waited around for three long hours, sweated the details of which track to wait on, and finally boarded our last train. Bumping through the night, we made it to Polonaruwa at 2AM and found our hotel relatively easily. After a recovery day of lazing around the room and cooking with the manager's family (and finding out from the manager that we could have taken a two hour train ride and a three hour bus ride and been here at about 7PM), we're ready for our four days here seeing some sights.

Rani sez: "Damn right we're takin the train!"