After traveling classic Sri Lankan train routes across the highlands from Kandy to Ella to Nuwara Eliya, I ended up taking a long-haul tuk-tuk from Nuwara Eliya to the Adam’s Peak trailhead town of Nallathanniya. This wasn’t planned in advance; I did it at the suggestion of my driver, Suranga, whom I’d hired to take me the ten minutes from my Nuwara Eliya guesthouse to the local train station. The price he quoted was about $8 more than the train, but I enjoyed the novel notion of a three-hour long-haul tuk-tuk ride.
Compared to the train, with its sprawling highland vistas and carriages full of photo-snapping travelers, my tuk-tuk ride was unique to the sensibility of my driver. Before we’d even left Nuwara Eliya, Suranga gave me a detailed rundown on his beloved hometown, claiming that it was cleaner and safer and more moral than other towns in Sri Lanka, that its residents were more intelligent and spoke better English than in other parts of the country.
Suranga’s improvised tour-banter continued as we traveled through the countryside, occasionally stopping at scenic waterfalls and tea-plantation vistas. Though I told him more than once that I was American, Suranga seemed convinced I was English – or least interested in all things English – and he made a point of taking me to an Anglican cemetery halfway down the highway to Nallathanniya.
I didn’t have it in mind to visit a cemetery that day, though I found it interesting how narrative all the old colonial gravestones were – how a 29-year-old named William Brown died trying to cross a stream in Maskeliya in June of 1868, or how a certain John Brown’s monument was “erected by a few friends” after his unexpected death at age 43.
My favorite part of the ride was how much Suranga enjoyed the driving through the countryside (rather than spending the day offering short-haul rides in Nuwara Eliya). It was as if he was getting paid to take a little vacation on the mountain roads outside his hometown; his obvious joy at seeing the sprawling highland landscape was infectious, and made the (slight) extra expense worth it.
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
