Ella, Part Two - The Train from Demodara

Shortly following our arrival, our host, Anne, referred to her elusive husband, Jon, who we had yet to meet.  She mentioned he would be able to take us down to the waterfall on their property if we liked (the waterfall was otherwise in accessible due to a locked gate they had installed to discourage trespassers) and when she talked about him, Elise and I imagined a man who spent most of his time tromping solitary through the jungle.

When we finally did meet him at the evening meal, we were both immediately reminded of the character in one of the kids' favorite picture books, Professor Wormbog, who curates a collection of 26 monsters, one for each letter of the alphabet, but cannot locate a specimen of the extremely rare Zipperump-a-zoo, only to discover they'd been hiding in the walls of his house, acting as tiny house pets, the entire time.

We'd originally planned to travel to Ella from Colombo by train.  Elise even went to the train station, a wad of multi-hued Sri Lankan rupee bills in hand, only to have all the tickets sell out minutes before she made it to the window.  Train tickets only go on sale a month in advance, and most our bought up by travel agencies within days.  We had largely planned our trip to Ella around train travel, so it was when that was no longer a possibility we went the van and driver route. 

As bad as a the drive to Ella was, the train trip may have been worse.  No doubt it would have been magnificently beautiful and memorable. It would have also been long. About nine hours one way, departing from Colombo around five in the morning. So, we may have dodged a bullet after all. 

But we still really wanted to go on a train ride.  The Nine Arch Bridge is one of the architectural wonders of Sri Lanka, and a train ride over the bridge is supposed to be in everyone's Sri Lanka bucket list. 

But we didn't have tickets and we didn't know how to get train tickets except for to just show up at the train station and try and luck. 

So, that's exactly what we did. 

I looked up the train times on Google.  We drove about a hour north to the small town of Demodara with the plan we would hop on the train at Demodara and travel back south, over the Nine Arch Bridge, and disembarking in the town of Ella. 

Of course, the train schedule Google had was nothing like the actual train schedule, and we arrived an hour early for the train to Ella. 

Demodara train station.  The dog is alive.  Promise. 

We were fortunate enough to snag nine 2nd class tickets to Ella, a 10-20 minute train ride for the U.S. dollar equivalent of about $2. 

Now, we just had to wait for the train.  

It wasn't long before Clementine and the boys had given names to all the stray dogs wandering in and out of the station. 

These monkeys were watching another family of monkeys playing on the telephone wires crossing the tracks. 

And after about an hour, the train came!

All aboard!

Boys playing cricket in a field. 

One of the most interesting aspects of traveling around the island, whether it be by car or train, is the way humanity weaves itself through the natural.  The island has been continually inhabited for 125,000 years.  The roads wind through the countryside, over hills topped with the alabaster white domes of Buddhist temples hidden among the jungle foliage and through valleys of carefully segmented rice paddies cordoned off with deep green grass berms.  As you drive past the fields you will see a lone man or woman toiling in the field and perhaps wonder what they are doing there, think passively or unconsciously about their existence, their life around the rice paddy, surrounded by tumbling green hills in all directions, accompanied by a lone, deep blue, bruised black, sleek-furred water buffalo with massive curling horns and bone white herons slicing the sky like an archer's arrows.  The roads twine past small houses out in the middle of nowhere with clotheslines crossing gardens and small storefronts, a pile of coconut husks by the open door outside, a bunch of green bananas hanging next to vines of plastic bags of potato chips in the open store window, a store which must exist to service the community, a symbiotic existence, if not really a business.  An endless, coiling maze of humanity hidden in the jungle, surviving, living, thriving. 

I never did get a shot of the Nine Arch Bridge, because I had to give up my choice window seat to the professional photographer. 

Not long after we crossed the bridge, however, we were rolling into Ella station. 

We walked from the train station into town where we stopped and had lunch at the Chill Cafe.  Ella was a hip hiking town nestled into the hills.  Think the Sri Lankan version of Boulder or Bellingham with tie-dyed flags, peace symbols, hookas, and dance clubs.  It was the backpacker depot for this part of the world, a modern resupply point for all those heading into the mountains, a place to stock up on a decent burger, a stop at the wine shop for a bottle arak or beer, and dress shops catering to Western proclivity, a place to buy leather sandals and t-shirts.  

That night was New Years' Eve. Though we would never make it to midnight, we would hear the loud pop of firecrackers echoing over the valley and perhaps see the flash of fireworks in our sleep underneath the mosquito netting.