Nuwara Eliya District

Train to Kandy, 8:30am

Haputale wakes up with the chants of different temples. The one next to my guesthouse was a buddhist one. The morning mist looked incredible. I went to the station, the train was running late (surprise!), so I took advantadge and had my first sweet breakkie in a cafe.

Kandy, 4:40pm

The train ride it's been great. The landscape kept changing as the train was going through: from misty forest to hills full of tea trees, and then to lushy jungle with coconut trees (in cas we had forgotten we were in Sri Lanka). The train ride was accompanied by the singings of different groups of yongsters.

On the train I met Musheen, a worker from a hotel in Anuradhapura who was going to Colombo. He wasn't super talkative but gave me some tips for my trip. During the ride to Kandy I couldn't help thinking of colonialism, past and present. The railway system was built to bring all the tea from the plantations to the sea ports. The British-style stations where still remains of that colonial era. But the feeling of the workers' present-day situation -still living in hardly bearable conditions- was quite disturbing. The way big Western corporations operate in third-world countries made me feel ashamed of my privileged situation.Les mer