Who knew. And so much for that.
Got to Ella late afternoon yesterday after a four hour coach ride along featureless motorways through featureless jungle followed by a long, grinding, winding haul up into the hills. The town itself, a ‘backpackers paradise’ according to the guide book, turned out to be the kind of place neither of us likes that much – a pandemonium main drag lined with tat and full of gormless, grumpy-looking millenials – but it’s essentially a base for hill country walking. This morning we took one of the easier schleps – out to the ‘iconic’ Seven Arch Bridge, which looked at first sight a bit ‘is that it?’, but on closer acquaintance absolutely justified its billing. Awe is not too strong a word, and you couldn’t help but doff a Panama to its Victorian engineers (not to mention the locals who doubtless did all the heavy lifting).
Walking back along the tracks, I thought it might be amusing if Virle ‘tied herself to the tracks’, like the heroine of an early Hollywood melodrama. No sooner had she complied than we heard a rumble, and one of the four trains a day came hurtling round the bend at a good 30mph. Don’t think I’ve ever seen her move so fast!
This afternoon we decided to take a jaunt up to Little Adam’s Peak, though the weather was a tad unpromising, and it turned out to be well worth the effort, offering great views all around this rugged, mountainous landscape.
Today we also met our first smiling Russian! And our first unsmiling Sri Lankans. The former, Eugenia, was a young traveller, on the final leg of a month in Sri Lanka before heading off to Vietnam. We discussed the perils of freelancing, in the age of AI – she said it, along with Russia’s current pariah status, had put the boot into her work as a translator. Turned out she had lived in Hanover for the last five years. Was she settled now, or did she plan to return to the motherland anytime soon? “There’s no way I’d ever go back to that place!” she said with a smile.
And the unsmiling Sri Lankans? Well, that’s just tourist town syndrome. Tired, jaded, seen ’em all, you’ll-be-gone-by-tomorrow-and-you-won’t-be-missed. It’s a shame, but hey, that’s just the way of the world, innit. If I lived here I doubt I’d be that smiley to tourists either. But it is a bit of a come down, after the friendliness we’ve met everywhere else. Hey ho, tomorrow’s another day.