After a guesthouse reservation fell through in Colombo I decided to give Sri Lanka’s sweltering capital a miss and head five hours inland to the storied hill-station city of Kandy. Coming off Sumatra I hadn’t properly fleshed out my travel plans for Sri Lanka, but sometimes it’s nice to improvise, and learn things as you go.
The first thing I learned upon arriving at Colombo Fort Railway Station is that Sri Lanka is more firmly a part of the Asia backpacker trail than Sumatra. Whereas I went for days in Sumatra without seeing another foreigner, Colombo’s train station was full of (mostly European) travelers, who milled around on the platforms comparing notes and scrutinizing time-schedules. I have always been a backpacker at heart, so it was nice to talk to other wanderers (even as one’s instinct as a backpacker is, ironically, to faintly prefer a place like Sumatra, where you don’t see many other backpackers).
Standing in the third-class ticket line, I was reminded of how extemporaneous and interchangeable one’s travel companions can be on the backpacker trail. Kate, a British woman in her fifties living hand-to-mouth as an English teacher, had asked me to hold a place in line for her while she used the toilet. She seemed to know what she was doing, and since we were headed the same way I figured I’d travel with her, but when she got back she had an angry fit when she found out third-class tickets cost 250 rupees (roughly $1.50) and stormed off to find a bus, which she said was much cheaper.
Since $1.50 felt well within my budget, I bought a third-class ticket and mixed in with fellow travelers on the platform. A free seat on the one available bench left me sitting next to Ann, a German chemistry student from Frankfurt who’d just finished a work-holiday waitressing gig in Australia. There were no available seats in the third-class car to Kandy, so Ann and I staked out a little portal next to the carriage door as the train rolled its way out of Colombo.
Our little space turned out to be prime train real estate – not just because, with the breeze, it was cooler than the humid interior seats, but because it was a great place to take photos of the landscape outside (and every single backpacker on our car, it seemed, wanted a panoramic selfie from the train).
So it was that Ann and I played accidental host to upwards of two-dozen smartphone-clutching fellow-travelers as the train made its way into the hilly interior of Sri Lanka. By my estimation, that’s more backpackers than I met during my one-month journey in Sumatra.
Note: “Dispatches” are short vignettes, profiles, and mini-essays written and posted from the road, often in tandem with my Instagram account. For more full-formed writing, check out my book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, or the Essays or Stories archives on this site. I don’t host a “comments” section, but I’m happy to hear your thoughts via my Contact page.
Share This
