Lazy morning, amazing breakfast:
Heading into town, caught the locals out for a game of cricket:
When we returned, they were still going, but with a different group of people, like a single game but with slowly rotating teams 🙂
It never ceases to surprise me how often you bump into the same people. Walking from the train station to the homestay yesterday, we saw the group of Flemish women we’d met at Polonnaruwa. And today, we met two or three groups we’ve seen before, including D&T from Poland. They travel a lot, often hiring a motorbike to explore independently.
Spent a lovely, chilled few hours drinking fruit juice (alcohol wasn’t served because it’s a public holiday – this is another stark contrast between here and home!), lunching and watching the afternoon rain. Rain in Asia is so heavy you often can’t see the individual drops, like it’s from a bucket not a cloud. And then the steam rises from the hot roads.
Second-class train travel has two distinct advantages over first-class: it’s much emptier (although maybe that was because it’s a less popular route), and you can hang out the windows:
Most tourists get off at Ella. Big mistake – the final part to Badulla is maybe even better:
Oh, and the return (2h) journey cost 40p. South Western Railway, please take note.
Mind you, it meant hanging round in Badulla for an hour, which wasn’t a very pleasant experience. I hesitate to criticise a place because everywhere is someone’s home (in this case, many people) and it’s quite likely many don’t have a choice. So let’s just say it’s functional. And dirty, noisy and polluted. On the positive side, the temple looked nice.
And we didn’t get scammed (another sign the tourists don’t come here) – an egg sandwich, two muffins and a scone cost a total of 45p. Beat that.
After a tour round the old-fashioned control room (Dad, you would have loved it), a very old locomotive returned us to Ella:
And a delicious, meal at Sumana’s place – the best I’ve had so far, and the only time the meat hasn’t been cremated:
Two contenders for BOTD today – a giant wasp scouting the dried fish stall in Badulla, and two fireflies on the walk back to the homestay. Didn’t get a picture of either, I’m afraid, so you’ll have to imagine them in all their glory and decide which one wins 🙂