Kandy-Ella: Tea and Terrible Tourists

Up in time to pack up a have a 6am breakfast out the front of the house – a lovely way to start the day. We took a selfie with Macksi (the manager) and Clement (the do-everything-guy) and took a tuk tuk to the station with plenty of time to spare for our 8.30 am train.

Travelling is so much easier here than in India – a guard directed us to our platform when we arrived, and another guard informed us when the platform and departure time changed. We watched in horror as hordes of tourists filed onto the platform for the train. Ella is a real bottleneck for travellers going north or south through the hill country, and everyone wants to be on the train dubbed ‘one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world’, and hopefully also grab the iconic photo of themselves hanging out of the train as the tea plantations go by, complete with picturesque tea workers (who also happen to earn a pittance and are exploited cheap labour).

It’s all a load of bollocks. I hate this “best X in the world” garbage, and I hate how people are so often brainless sheep when it comes to ticking off their silly wishlists of doing things that eveyone else has already done before them.

Was it a lovely long train ride with some gorgeous views? Absolutely. The stretch of tea plantations around Nuwara Eliya was especially nice, and the bit from Haputale to Ella had many spectacular views over wide valleys. We were lucky to be sitting by a window which we quickly opened, and even more lucky to be facing in the right direction, as the carriages alternated facing forward and facing back, and Carol would have been a mess if she’d had to sit in the latter. At first sitting on the left side of the car seemed the less-than ideal side (books and blogs say the right side is better – I’m not sure why as you can’t book your exact seats – but actually at least the last third of the trip had better views on the left.

Of course, thanks to bloody lnstagram every tourist is obsessed with hanging out of the train in a stupid and dangerous pose a getting a photo of themself doing so. One person at least, a 53-year old Russian woman, was killed when she hit a rock doing this pretty recently. And watching people shooting pics while facing away from upcoming tunnel entrances made one despair at the stupidity of human beings.

Not to mention the unbelievable vanity of it all.

I talked briefly with a Sri Lankan man now living in the States and holidaying in his own country. Later in the trip, everyone was disturbed by a group of idiot Australian men wearing matching SRI LANKA tank-tops and clutching beer cans (they served alcohol on the train, and one guy in our carriage had his first at 10am), running up and down the aisles, and outside along the train when it stopped briefly, like 12 year olds on too much red cordial. A few of them stopped and surrounded a poor young girl (these fools were in their 30s and didn’t even have youth as an excuse; Carol noticed wedding rings too) and tried to chat her up, and as I was getting very close to intervening the they ran off again. Carol went over to her and asked if she was OK, and said we were Australian and if they came back she’d tell them to fuck off. It was utterly disgraceful, childish, embarrassing behaviour, and what’s worse when they got off at Ella, still clutching beers, one of then appeared to be his 40s, and dragging his (embarrassed looking) teenage son along. Poor kid. They made me ashamed to be Australian.

After a thousand gigabytes of video and photography by a trainload of tourists, we arrived at Ella, and everyone filed off the train in a slow queue, tourists and backpackers all. We grabbed the first tuk tuk driver we could find to take us to the Chill Ville, a place 15 mines out of town. And we lave no desire at all to go back to town, as it looked like Pub Street in Siem Reap – all bars and restaurants filled with self-conscious tourists and not a local in site. Repulsive, and the exact opposite of the experience we want to have when travelling.

In contrast, this place is up in the hills with a stunning new, a pool, and only about 7 rooms. We got the last one, which is family-sized. Apart from the ubiquitous barking dogs, it’s very quiet. I had a swim and leaned on the edge of the pool gazing at the view, then later we both had excellent margueritas.

One very funny incident happened when we arrived: a young French couple were by the pool, and were taking turns softly stroking can others’ arms and thighs. Later as was reading by the pool she was singing to herself and doing a little dance in front of him. Our initial theory about all this was that they were in the process of a long tantric sex lead-up, or, as I suggested, “they were brother and sister and just got along very well.”

A wonderful dinner at outside tables in a large roofed dining area with no walls and a high wooden peaked roof. I’m so full – big breakfast, chicken biryani on the train for lunch, prawns and noodles for dinner, and all topped off with a chocolate brownie!

It’s quite cool up here in the hills – we both wore our merino tops for the first time this trip.