There is a moment, about an hour out of Kandy, when you stop checking the time. The carriage sways, the window is down, and the air has changed. It is cooler now, and it smells faintly of wet earth and something green you can’t quite name. Below you, a valley falls away into mist. Nobody on this train is in a hurry. Soon, neither are you.
The hill-country railway was built by the British in the nineteenth century to carry coffee, and later tea, down from the mountains. It still climbs the same way it always has: slowly, patiently, curve after curve, through tunnels cut by hand and across bridges that seem to hang in the air. The journey from Kandy to Ella takes about seven hours. You will wish it took longer.
A window onto another century
Outside, the tea begins. It covers every hillside in neat, impossible rows, like green velvet laid over the mountains. Women in bright saris move between the bushes, picking only the top two leaves and a bud, as they have for generations. Children run alongside the train at the little stations. A vendor walks the aisle with paper cones of spiced chickpeas and the sweetest milk tea you will ever drink.
Nobody on this train is in a hurry. After an hour, neither are you.
Somewhere past Nanu Oya the clouds come down to meet you. For a while the world disappears. There is just white, the rhythm of the wheels and the cool mist on your face. Then the train comes out of the cloud and the whole of Uva is spread out below you, blue ridge after blue ridge, all the way to the horizon.
Arriving in Ella
Ella is a small mountain village with an enormous view. You arrive in the late afternoon, a little stiff and completely content. Someone takes your bag. There is a room waiting with a balcony that looks straight down the Ella Gap, and the sound of crickets as the light goes gold.
People come to Sri Lanka for its beaches and its leopards. Many of them say, years later, that this ride is what they remember most. Perhaps it’s because, for seven hours, the island asks nothing of you except that you look out of the window and let it happen.
