Train to Trincomalee

About an hour before the train arrived, the staff at Colombo Fort Station decided to put a couple of 40 Watt lamps on. In the dim glow I could now make out my fellow passengers. The dark and somewhat threatening shadows of the previous hours now turned to be mostly poor and emaciated old folk.

As the time for departure approached the platform began to fill with a decidedly more prosperous looking bunch. Presumably they had the wherewithal to pay for a bed for the night.

Suddenly a single piercing beam of light cut it's way through the dark. My nighttime companions start to shuffle around gathering together their belongings. My train to Tricomalee has arrived.

A teenage boy approaches and mimes that me wants to see my ticket. Being an old Asia hand (ha ha) I know I'm about to be scammed. I go along with him to see how it will develop. He finds me a seat in the second class carriage then produces a nicely made identity card saying he's deaf.
I use the old trick of pretending I can't read it because I haven't got my glasses, at which point a very nice old Sri Lankan gentleman (incidentally with the most spectacular handlebar moustache I've ever seen) offers me his. I try these and again pretend I can't read. Eventually having tried various mimes incuding actually showing me some money he gives up and trots off with a big smile on his face. Perhaps he's grateful to be deaf and not blind and stupid!

With a clanking, grinding and graunching of metal on metal we pull out of the station. This cacophony of sound build and builds as the train gathers speed reaching an unbearable crescendo. Just when I think it can get no worse the carriage starts to lurch violently from side to side. A heavy metal door begins slamming rhythmically it is joined in some sort of hellish counterpoint by the cover plates between the carriages. I look round, my fellow passengers seem entirely unconcerned by the noise or the buffeting which continues pretty much unabated for the duration of my 9 hour journey.

Dawn rises slowly for the tropics. Typical rural Sri Lankan scenery rolls past. Rice, rice, rice interspersed with the occasional palm grove. Small villages, the occasional town, almost imperceptibly the distance between them starts to lengthen. Then I realise we've been travelling through jungle for more than an hour. It continues the whole way to my destination.

The jungle in Sri Lanka is not perhaps as dense or as high as one's perception of how a jungle should be, but by all accounts it can be as harsh and unwelcoming. The stations and surrounding villages hacked out from this environment contain some of the poorest people in the nation.

"The solitary traveller is never alone for long" I've read this now I think it's true. Alone in my carriage I moved to the two pairs of facing seats to get my feet up, later I was joined by two traditional Sri Lankan ladies. I was interrogated for more than an hour, I think I gave them sufficient information on the British social mores to ensure they never let their daughters every marry an Englishman.

My mustachioed friend from earlier told at great length the tale of the engine pulling this very train. It was he assured me the one swept away by the tsunami (near Galle). After the tragedy the train was repaired and put back into service. To commemorate this blue wave were painted down the sides. An interesting story somewhat diminished a little later when I went to look and found out it hadn't been painted and so presumably wasn't said engine.

My journey I was assured at the ticket office would take 12 hours and would include a 3 hour wait at Galoya Junction. It turns out that a 3rd class only train makes the connection every day. Presumably they don't even mention it's existence for fear of offending Western sensibilities.

The strangest part of my journey was waking from a short dose to find I was now facing the engine. I distinctly remember having my back to it. Don't know how it happened but it did freak me out!