As in, hoorah, it looks like we’re actually going home. Sitting here in the departure lounge in the airport, surprisingly perky given that I slept not a wink last night, and little more than an hour on a park bench this morning. Must be the excitement!
It was a good finale in the end. Went up the road for our last kotthu, at the restaurant we’ve been visiting daily for the last ten days. Our lovely host asked to take a picture, and we reciprocated, having already determined to get one of her before we kicked off. Then we just had to get a tuk tuk (with absolutely the worst tuk tuk driver we’ve come across in all the time we’ve been here – one of his several misdemeanours being an attempt to dump us at some random dirt track in the middle of nowhere, insisting the temple we needed to be dropped at was ‘up there’), then get on an AC bus, which proved nearly as uncomfortable as the overnight train we came on – and even more impossible to sleep in.
My contemporaneous notes from the journey include:
“Our Trincomalee to Colombo ‘Express’ bus started out by stopping randomly every half mile or so to pick up individual passengers from the roadside, and now, having got past that, has just stopped for five or ten minutes apparently to pick up large quantities of curd. Now we’re off again. What next? Who knows. It’s a novel take on ‘express’, that’s for damn sure.”
and
“The journey has so far taken place entirely on single carriageways – I don’t think there are any big roads in this part of the country. On straight sections, we really shift – 60+ mph at a guess – but there are many doglegs, and any number of lumbering goods vehicles, which means slowing to a crawl if anything significant is going in t’other direction. Meaning, essentially, anything with four wheels. Anything on two, well move aside I’m coming through. Might is right on Sri Lankan roads.”
and
“To add to the mix, roadside signs: Wild elephants crossing.”
and lastly
“12.15, and we look to be half-wayish. At this rate we’ll arrive in Colombo at 3 in the morning. God knows what we do then.”
In the event, traffic coming into Colombo meant we didn’t find ourselves unceremoniously dumped on the pavements of Columbo till nearer four in the morning, but still. No sleep, no prospect of sleep, four in the morning. Only the abyss ahead.
That’s enough upbeat for now. Middle of the night, though the city was starting to stir, lights in shops, ‘hotels’. Bleary-eyed, maybe 15 hours to kill?, we started off by dropping in at a canteen near Port station for a cup of tea and some half-arsed and doomed attempts to find a room for the next few hours. Since then we’ve been wandering around killing time, including a couple of hours dozing on a park bench (very hard – just planks, and me so boney), visiting Sri Lanka’s ‘premier department store’ (spent £15 on a t for me! In Sri Lanka! I know, what are we like), and returning to the station for one last curry & rice, before catching the shuttle to the airport, where we now have about another three hours to kill before our flight leaves (surely!) for Riyadh.
It’s been a lot of fun. London, here we come.
