Landschlacht, Switzerland, Thursday 2 July 2020

Swiss Miss, let me compare thee to an elephant.

No, this is not a comparison of size, but of a mentality that tourists may be said to also possess.

From John Gimlette’s Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka:

“It is not difficult to see why people have fought over this Island for thousands of years.

Six centuries ago, a papal legate noted that “from Seyllan to Paradise, according to native legend, is a distance of 40 miles, so that, ’tis said, there may be heard the sound of the fountains of Paradise“….

Everyone has wanted a piece of Paradise….

Above: Paradise (1620), Jan Brueghel (1601 – 1678)

Indeed, looking back over the last two millennia, it is hard to spot a century in which Taprobane or Ceylon or Sri Lanka was neither occupied, invaded nor riven by catastrophic civil war….

It hasn’t helped that it sits at the axis of the Indian Ocean and its neighbour is India, a land 60 times its size and – now – with 60 times its population.

Nor has it helped that there are always rich picking for the predatory.

As the military historian Geoffrey Powell wrote:

“A country doesn’t have to be rich to invite invasions, but Ceylon was always wealthy: a treasure house of spices and gems, elephants and rice.”

Above: Flag of Ceylon

You only need to look at a map to get a sense of this country’s fecundity.

It is all to do with the island’s shape, like a planter’s hat.

Around the coast, there is a brim of brilliant green, but towards the centre, an enormous hummock of rock appears, about the size of Cornwall and over 7,000 feet tall.

It is not hard to imagine the clouds off the Indian Ocean, hitting this and turning into torrents.

Sri Lanka is completely wrinkled in rivers.

They even wriggle through the dry zones, feeding great blotches of blue.

Above: Topographical map of Sri Lanka

All this explains the bewildering wildlife.

Although Sri Lanka is only the size of Ireland, it is home to a startling array of creatures, from crocodiles and leopards to the “ashy-headed laughing thrush“.

Even more remarkable, not only does it host the biggest creature ever found on the planet (the blue whale), it is also home to the world’s biggest land creature.

Just one wild elephant would cause a stir, wandering about in the Irish Republic (or for that matter the Helvetic Confederation)…

And yet Sri Lanka has over 5,800.

Unsurprisingly, elephants have loomed large in the island’s history.

For much of it, the ali has been seen as a symbol of power and authority, but also a pliable servant.

The Sri Lankan elephant has always been mysteriously easy to train….

A mere 140 remain in captivity.

Perhaps the wild elephants say more about the complexity of this Island than anything else.

It is said they follow the same paths all their lives and from generation to generation.

These paths are everywhere and are often unknown to human beings.

This means that Sri Lanka is densely criss-crossed with invisible corridors that have remained unchanged for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

Sometimes an alimankada (elephant path) won’t be used for a while and people will forget that it is there.

But once the elephants are back on their path, there is little that will divert them.

They will break through fences and pickets.

They have been known to sweep aside huts and little houses.

Zoologists are uncertain whether to describe this as obstinate or determined.

All that is clear is that, in the collective elephantine mind, there is a great plan of this Island.

Elephants go on seasonal migrations in search of food, water, minerals and mates.

Elephants like their regular paths and they may well have been taking the same route since the fall of Rome.

They won’t have come far.

Elephants don’t migrate and have a range of only around 20 square miles, but, within that, they are always on the move.

When your body needs 550 lb of foliage a day, along with 22 gallons of water, life is a constant meal in motion.

Science tells us that these magnificent beasts have no particular insight, no greater understanding of the world all around.

But it never looks that way.

Maybe the human mind works in the same way….”

Above: Phrenological map of the brain, Friedrich Eduard Blitz (1842 – 1922)

The elephantine mind is one we cannot read, except to surmise that elephants instinctively follow paths only they know exist.

Something in their genetic code tells them that here is a path that must be followed, regardless of what manmade structures now possess that path.

Compare this mentality of fixed surety with the mentality of another herd of mammals: the human tourist….

Sri Lanka and the Corona Virus

Right now, Sri Lanka, like so many other places on this covina-plagued planet, has been under lockdown conditions.

On 25 January, Sri Lanka’s first reported case was identified and the victim was reported to be a Chinese woman.

On 10 March, the first Sri Lankan local national tested positive for Covid-19.

On 12 March, all schools were closed until 20 April.

On 14 March, the Sri Lankan Government declared Monday March 16 as a public holiday following the rapid rise of coronavirus positive cases in the country.

Public Administration and Home Affairs Minister Janaka Bandara Tennakoon said the decision was taken following the spread of the virus aiming to help government institutions to control the spread of the disease more effectively.

The Minister also said that he is prepared to extend the holiday if necessary.

Above: Janaka Bandara Tennakoon

Following are the other measures taken by the government to keep the virus at bay.

• All travel from eight European countries -France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden and Austria banned from 15th March for two (2) weeks.
• Consular services provided by overseas Sri Lankan missions in Italy, Iran, South Korea, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, The Netherlands, Sweden and Austria.
• Dehiwala Zoo, other zoological & botanical gardens and national parks under Wildlife Department will be closed for two weeks from 15 March.

• All film halls and theatres under the National Film Corporation have suspended screening films until further notice.
• A special health program implemented at Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy to sanitize faces and hands of foreign tourist and devotees.
• Archbishop Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith requests all churches to refrain from conducting Sunday and other masses till end of March.

Above: Archbishop Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith

• All major events and public gatherings banned for two weeks.
• Foreign employment training programs temporarily suspended from March 13-31.
• All common public transport will be disinfected from March 14 with the assistance of security forces.

Above: Emblem of Sri Lanka

On 12 March 2020, false reports were claimed by few individuals in social media that the son of 52-year-old tour guide who was infected with COVID-19 virus also deemed to have infected with the virus.

However, the allegations were refused by the Ministry of Health and was evident that the boy who was falsely alleged to have infected with the virus was reported later that no symptoms were identified after thorough checking and was revealed to be the student of Ananda College.

Above: Ananda College logo

Sri Lankan Police have requested the general public to not mislead themselves from rumours which are spread across social media platforms.

Above: Logo of the Sri Lankan Police

On 12, 13 and 14 March, the general public rushed to the supermarkets and grocery shopping centers with the intention of bulk purchases speculating that the country could face possibility of lockdown amid corona virus fears, rumours were also spreading in social media that there was a shortage of products in the country.

The Sri Lankan government later insisted the public to not unnecessarily panic about the corona virus pandemic and revealed that there was no shortage of essential items in the country including petroleum and food.

Sri Lanka Chamber of the Pharmaceutical Industry chairperson Kasturi Chellaraja Wilson revealed that there was no shortage of essential pharmaceutical products and drugs.

There were rumours regarding the house-to-house quarantine in the social media but the government refused the allegations.

On 16 March, opposition MP Rajitha Senaratne made a controversial statement that 10 school students being infected with the virus, while MP Sarath Fonseka claimed that there three deaths due to the corona virus.

Above: Dr. Rajitha Fonseka

However, on 18 March, Sarath Fonseka accepted it was a mistake and that he was merely quoting false information on Facebook.

The police began an investigation on the two MPs.

Above: Sarath Fonseka

Former Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa promoted Plaquenil as a drug superior than Hydroxychloroquine.

Plaquenil is the brand name of Hydroxycholoroquine and is the same drug.

Due to its serious side effects self-administration is not recommended.

Premadasa also claimed Azithromycin can treat side effects of Hydroxycholoroquine.

Azithromycin is an antibiotic and is not used to treat side effects of Hydroxycholoroquine.

Sajith Premadasa later apologised for spreading misinformation.

Above: Sajith Premadasa

On 24 March, Sri Lanka records 100 infected patients.

On 27 March, the first Sri Lankan national died from Covid-19.

Above: Symptoms of Covid-19, Dr. Mikael Häggström

Sathasivam Loganathan (59) was living in Switzerland with his relatives.

He had been advised by the Swiss police to self quarantine, which he did.

This did not help.

Above: Sathasivam Loganathan (1961 – 2020)

On 16 April, it was announced that Sri Lanka was the 16th highest risk country prone to the pandemic, but, despite this, it was also named the 9th best country in the world for its successful immediate response on tackling the virus.

On 29 April, Sri Lanka recorded 600 Covid-19 patients.

On 11 May, it was announced that Sri Lanka’s state and government businesses should open from 10 am, though partial curfews will continue, the President’s office said.

“Civilians except those who are essentially required to report to work are requested to remain in their homes,” the President’s office said.

Above: Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa

That same day, a protest was held by prison inmates in Anuradhapura to separate themselves from each other after the identification of four reported corona virus cases in Anuradhapura.

The protest became violent during a shooting incident resulting in the death of two prisoners, leaving a further six injured.

On 30 May, Sri Lanka recorded 1,600 Covid-19 patients.

On 5 June, Sri Lanka reached 1,800 Covid-19 patients.

On 9 June 2020, Black Lives Matter protests were staged by the activists, followers and supporters of the Frontline Socialist Party as a part of the international George Floyd protests calling for justice of murdering George Floyd in front of the US Embassy in Kollupitiya, Colombo.

However the protests became violent when police arrested nearly 20 people for violating the health and quarantine regulations.

On 15 June, Sri Lanka reached 1,905 Covid-19 patients (11 deaths), nevertheless, national parks and zoological gardens throughout the country were reopened with a visitor limit in line with government health regulations.

To all intents and purposes the Sri Lankan lockdown has mostly eased, though Sri Lankans have been asked to maintain social distancing until further notice.

Public gatherings and festivals remain banned.

Schools will reopen on 7 July and exams have been postponed until September.

Understandably, all of this has further affected the downfall of Sri Lanka’s tourism sector, which was recovering slowly from the impact of the 2019 Easter bombings.

Add to this, a decrease of Chinese tourist arrivals and the suspension of flights and pilgrimages to India.

Kandy to Ella (via Matale), Sri Lanka, Thursday 7 February 2019

What Came Before

As regular followers of this blog and the Swiss Miss Chronicles know, Heidi Hoi was in Sri Lanka in 2019 before the Easter bombings, she has not returned since, and I have recently been informed that she has no plans to return until September 2020.

But when she does return, she intends to repeat (this time with a different friend) the train journey she took on Thursday 7 February 2019 from Kandy to Ella, but whether social distancing rules or a resurgence of the pandemic (Heaven forbid) will interfere in these plans is difficult to predict.

Swiss Miss and Wogga Wogga Woman rode the Matale and Main Lines of Sri Lankan National Railways on the aforementioned Thursday and remained in Ella for five days.

Above: Logo of Sri Lankan Railways

From Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family:

“Ceylon falls on a map and its outline is the shape of a tear.

After the spaces of India and Canada, Ceylon is so small.

A miniature.

Drive ten miles and you are in a landscape so different that by rights it should belong to another country.

From Galle in the south to Colombo a third of the way up the coast is only 70 miles.

When houses were built along the coastal road it was said that a chicken could walk between the two cities without touching ground.

Ceylon is cross-hatched with maze-like routes whose only escape is the sea.

From a ship or a plane you can turn back or look down at the disorder.

Villages spill onto streets.

The jungle encroaches on village.

Above: Colombo

The Ceylon Road and Rail Map resembles a small garden full of darting red and black birds.

Sri Lankans wear the Railway as if it is a public suit of clothes.”

Like the instinctual movements of elephants that they follow through generations uncalculable, tourists tend to follow the path of previous tourists before them.

And previous tourists there certainly has been.

From John Gimlette’s Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka:

“Countless outsiders – from Chekhov to Jan Morris – have written of the island’s mystique.

Leonard Woolf talked of a “curious mixture of intense reality and unreality“, though Britons have taken all of this simply for granted.

Above: Bust of Leonard Woolf (1880 – 1969), Monk’s House, Rodmell, England

Perhaps Americans are more sensitive to it.

Certainly, they have tended to write about Sri Lanka as if it were a labyrinth.

As author Mark Meadows put it:

“The circumstances are so complicated, detailed and delicate that no one individual can comprehend them.”

For another American correspondent, exhausted by war, Sri Lanka was a maze all right, but a maze of deceit.

William McGowan wrote:

“Sri Lanka was shot through with a psychology of avoidance and denial, linked, in part, to the crucial process of saving face.”

Perhaps, the most troubling words of all come from a UN adviser, Australian Gordon Weiss, writing at the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war (1983 – 2009):

“I was warned before going to Sri Lanka that when I left I would know the country less well than when I arrived, and in a sense this is true.”

Foreign writers have never known quite what to make of Sri Lanka.

Some thought it hardly Oriental at all, whereas to Mark Twain it was Asia taken to extremes.

Above: Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

For Anton Chekhov, it was a sensual place, replete with opportunity:

“I had a dalliance with a dark-eyed Hindu.

Where?

In a coconut grove on a moonlit night.”

Above: Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904)

Pablo Neruda also found opportunities in 1929, although, the way he describes it, the encounters were fumbled and cold:

“The coming together of man and a statue.”

As the Chilean consul, Neruda was often lonely.

He conjures a world that is “lovely and sly“.

Above: Pablo Neruda (1904 – 1973)

For many Sri Lankans, Arthur C. Clarke is the only writer who has ever understood them.

Above: Arthur C. Clarke (1917 – 2008)

Meanwhile, there was less complicated affection from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”

Above: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930)

Whether Heidi understood Sri Lanka in the month she was there in 2019, whether her comprehension will enlarge in September, or whether she will ever comprehend the country perhaps does not matter.

Her travels in Sri Lanka and the itinerary she followed was in large part formed by other travellers she met while she was there.

If they recommended somewhere, then Heidi would go where they had recommended.

Above: Flag of Switzerland

Tourists, like elephants, follow the routes others have travelled before them.

Above: Sketch of the elephant Hansken (1630 – 1655) by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606 – 1669)

Though, in fairness, one should split the species of homo sapien turistico into two sub-categories:

• Those who go expecting to find what they left behind wherever they go
• Those who seek not to find what they left behind back home

Heidi and Wogga are of the latter category:

Travellers.

They would be very surprised and slightly amused if anyone imagined that they would only stick to Sri Lankan beaches.

Above: Weligama Beach, Sri Lanka

They had heard quite a lot about the train journey from Kandy to Ella and heeded the advice of those who had experienced it.

They were advised not to board the train in Kandy, but instead to hire a tuk tuk driver to take them to Matale where at the northern end of the line the train would not be quite as crowded, as everyone and her cousin seem to get on the train in Kandy.

Above: Kandy Train Station

They were told to purchase 2nd class tickets rather than 1st class tickets as the windows in 1st class, despite the astronomical difference in price between the classes (1st class: LKR (Sri Lankan rupees) 1,500 / 2nd class: LKR 310 / 3rd class: LKR 175) do not open – (air conditioning, perhaps?) – while part of the delightful experience is hanging one’s body outside the window.

(I am not certain why 3rd class was rejected, but perhaps livestock travel along with the passengers?)

They were told to sit on the right-hand side of the train heading to Ella for the best views.

Above: Platform, Kandy Train Station

Tourists resemble elephants in another way.

They tend to travel in herds.

Above: Elephants on parade at the Esala Perahera (Festival of the Tooth), Kandy

Trains in Sri Lanka lack privacy entirely.

There are no individual compartments and most of the passengers spend their time walking through carriages, curious to see who else is on board, or they stand for the entirety of their journey in cramped bone-jarring conditions unable to escape the herd that surrounds them, unable to actually see the scenery that is the reason for the journey.

Perhaps it is my Canadian-ness that shies away from the notion of travelling in a cramped and crowded train, the difficulty of being assured of a seat, the inability to be free of your fellow human beings regardless of how wonderful and social they might be.

Perhaps it is the notion of the great difficulty there is of disembarking the train – because of the crowd that blocks the aisle of each wagon – that causes me to reject taking this method when / if I ever get to Sri Lanka.

And though the distance between Kandy and Ella is a mere 162 kilometres as the crow flies, the journey itself, albeit spectacular, is a grueling seven-hour endurance test.

Somehow I don’t think my old body (55) in a large frame (194 cm / 6’5″) would enjoy this train very much.

From my research there seems to be a number of places en route between Matale and Ella that I would like to visit, though, in total fairness to Heidi, she, like most travellers, had to consider both expense and time when travelling.

But, in an ideal world, the notion of walking – slow as that might be – between Matale and Ella seems appealing, but whether that is even possible outside of the country’s national parks I am not sufficiently informed to contemplate.

Between Kandy and Matale, the Matale Line route map shows 15 stations.

I could garner very little information about these stations during the writing of this post.

Matale Railway Station is the terminus station on the Matale Line is the 65th station on the line from Colombo Fort (148.6 km / 92.3 miles away)(17 miles from Kandy).

As I have spoken of Matale in my last Swiss Miss post I will refrain from doing so here.

Above: Matale

So, let us pretend that we have all boarded the train in Kandy, rather than the tuk tuk taxi that Wogga and Heidi did.

Mind Your Language in Gambola

Instead let us speak of the most scenic part of the journey from Peradeniya Junction (where the Matale Line meets the Main Line) to Ella and what lies between.

Before the next station (Koshinna) is reached, the train crosses the Nanu Oya.

The Nanu Oya is a 27 km (17 mi) long stream in the Central Province of Sri Lanka.

It originates from Pidurutalagala at an elevation of over 2,000 m (6,562 ft) and drains into the Kotmale Oya at an elevation of approximately 1,200 m (3,937 ft).

The Kotmale Oya is a tributary of the Mahaweli River, the longest river in Sri Lanka, which finally discharges at Trincomalee after a combined distance of nearly 350 km (217 mi).

The river was dammed in 1873 to create the popular Lake Gregory in Nuwara Eliya.

The Nanu Oya discharges into the Kotmale Oya 2.5 km (1.6 mi) upstream of the Upper Kotmale Dam.

The stations encountered all bear strange sounding names replete with exoticism: Koshinna, Gelioya, Polgaha Anga, Weligalla, Gangathilaka, Kahatapitiya….

Gampola is a town located in Kandy District, Central Province, Sri Lanka, governed by an Urban Council.

The road and the railway line into the Highlands cross this bazaar town, now insignificant.

Native innovations introduced some new subsistence patterns toward the agriculture and husbandry as well as sedentism.

The Mahawali River itself provided water while many other canals and rivers flow into the river too.

The flat terrain of Gampola’s paddy fields is cultivated by the water of an ancient irrigation called Raja ala.

Another paddy field of the area is famous as ‘Mahara‘.

This background of economic change is closely tied with the spread of Buddhism since the 3rd century BC.

The first such evidence of human settlements in the historic period are clearly defined by Early Brahmic Inscriptions (EBI), so the Gampola area could act as a support to identifying early settlements in the lower montane valley of the Mahaweli Ganga.

Vegiriya Devale, near Gampola, bears an EBI, so it could date to the 3rd century BC.

Though these EBI clearly shows human habitation and Buddhism in the region at the time, evidence can only be found here and there until the 13th century.

The South Indian adventurer, the despotic Kalinga Magha (r. 1215 – 1236), who instituted a chaotic reign of terror during which the Island’s complex irrigation systems gradually fell into disrepair, not only brought chaos and decay, but compelled in defiance the creation of two new centres of power in the north and south of Sri Lanka.

Above: Jetavanaramaya, Anuradhapura, one of the many massive stupas raided during Magha’s reign

Kalinga Magha, a South Indian with uncertain origins, identified as the founder of the Jaffna kingdom, invaded and captured the Kingdom of Polonnaruwa.

He sailed from Kalinga 690 nautical miles on 100 large ships with a 24,000 strong army.

Unlike previous invaders, he looted, ransacked and destroyed everything in the ancient Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa Kingdoms beyond recovery.

His priorities in ruling were to extract as much as possible from the land and overturn as many of the traditions of Rajarata as possible.

His reign saw the massive migration of native Sinhalese people to the south and west of Sri Lanka, and into the mountainous interior, in a bid to escape his power.

Sri Lanka never really recovered from the impact of Kalinga Magha’s invasion.

Sinhala nobles set off to Dambadeniya, southwest of the old capital of Polonnaruwa and founded a new capital under the rule of Vijayabahu III (r. 1232 – 1236).

His successor Parakramabahu III (r. 1236 – 1270) defeated Magha, who retired to Jaffna.

In the resulting period of tension, the capital was relocated several times, around 1340 the Kingdom was divided into the two rival principalities of Gampola and Dedigama.

As the Sinhalese gradually retreated further south to the safe Hill Country, the Tamils filled the power vacuum in the north of Sri Lanka.

They eventually took control of an area that stretched from the Jaffna Peninsula to Anuradhapura and founded the independent Kingdom of Jaffna there in the 13th century.

The two regions also developed further apart in religion and language.

Above: Flag of the Kingdom of Jaffna

The Kingdom of Jaffna continued to expand southward and even demanded taxes from the Sinhala regions.

But the Kingdom’s strength was short-lived.

To prevent further penetration on the west coast, the Sinhalese built the Kotte fortress southeast of Colombo.

Above: Flag of the Kingdom of Kotte

As one of the Sri Lankan capitals established amidst the green valleys and wooded hillocks of Gampola, settlements were extended from Gampola to Peradeniya and finally to Kandy.

Sinhalese Kingdoms:

• Kingdom of Tambapanni (543 – 505 BC)
• Kingdom of Upatissa Nuwara (505 – 377 BC)
• Kingdom of Anuradhapura (377 BC – 1017)
• Kingdom of Polonnaruwa (1056–1236)
• Kingdom of Dambadeniya (1236–1272)
• Kingdom of Gampola (1345–1408)
• Kingdom of Kotte (1408–1598)
• Kingdom of Sitawaka (1521–1593)
• Kingdom of Kandy (1590–1815)

Ambalam or resting houses are not rare and some still stand along the ancient road that once crossed Gampola.

As an example, Panabokke Ambalama dates back to the Gampola era.

Above: Kodumon Chilanthi Ambalam, Kerala

(From Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family:

Resthouses are an old tradition in Sri Lanka.

The roads are so dangerous that there is one every 15 miles.

You can drive in to relax, have a drink or lunch or get a room for the night.

Above: Weligama Rest House

It is important to understand the tradition of the Visitors’ Book.

After a brief or long stay at a resthouse, one is expected to write one’s comments.

It was on his travels by road that my father (Mervyn Ondaatje) waged war with a certain Sammy Dias Bandaranaike, a close relative of the eventual Prime Minister of Sri Lanka later assassinated by a Buddhist monk.

The Bandaranaike – Ondaatje feud began and was contained within the arena of Visitors’ Books.

Above: Michael Ondaatje’s parents, Mervyn and Doris?

What happened was that Sammy and my father happened to visit the Kitulgala resthouse simultaneously.

Sammy, as my side of the feud tells it, was a scrounger for complaints.

While most people wrote two or three lines, Sammy would have spent his whole visit checking every tap and shower to see what was wrong and would have plenty to say.

On this occasion, Sammy left first, having written half a page in the Kitulgala resthouse Visitors’ Book.

Sammy bitched at everything, from the service to the badly made drinks, to the poor rice, to the bad beds.

Almost an epic.

Above: Kitulgala Resthouse

My father left two hours later and wrote two sentences:

“No complaints.

Not even about Mr. Bandaranaike.”

As most people read these comments, they were as public as a newspaper advertisement.

(As John Gimlette puts it:

“A good joke goes round the Island in three days, but a good scandal takes only three hours.“)

Soon everyone including Sammy had heard about Mervyn’s comment.

And everyone but Sammy was amused.

A few months later they both happened to hit the resthouse in Avissawella for lunch.

They stayed there only an hour ignoring each other.

Sammy left first, wrote a half-page attack on my father and complimented the good food.

Mervyn wrote one and a half pages of vindictive prose about the Banadaranike family, dropping hints of madness and incest.

Above: Avissawella Resthouse

The next time they came together, Sammy allowed Mervyn to write first.

After Mervyn had left, Sammy put down all the gossip he knew about the Ondaatjes.

This literary war broke so many codes that, for the first time in Sri Lankan history, pages had to be ripped out of Visitors’ Books.

Eventually one would write about the other even when the other was nowhere near the resthouse.

Pages continued to be torn out, ruining a good archival history of two prominent Sri Lankan families.

The war petered out when neither Sammy nor Mervyn was allowed to write their impressions of a stay or a meal.

The standard comment on Visitors’ Books today about “constructive criticism” dates from this feud.)

One of the ancient routes for Sri Pada was tracked through this region.

Minister Devapathiraja, in the reign of Parakramabahu II, built a 35-cubit long (300 riyan) bridge and another 30-cubit long bridge across the Kanāmadirioya for the pilgrims of the route and also made a statue of the god Sumana at Gampola.

However, compared to the other capitals of the country, Gampola was neither highly populated nor developed, but could provide a resistance against an attack protected by its natural setting.

Though its value as a Kingdom only lasts with a brief period of a few kings, it considerably influences the contemporary politics, which was actually complicated as well as blurred.

The Gampola Kingdom formed around ‘Siduruvana Rata’ commanded supremacy on 14 other terrestrial divisions known as Rata’s and occupies an important place in history as it used to be the seat of government of the Sinhalese Kings during the period of 1314 – 1415.

Buvanekabahu IV (r. 1341-1351), the son of Vijayabahu V, moved his capital to Gampola.

Mahavansa mentioned it as follows:

“After the death of these two kings there reigned a 4th ruler of men bearing the name of Bhuvanekabahu, who was a man of great wisdom and faith and dwelt in the delightful city of Gangasiripura. (Gampola)

After his death, his brother Parakramabahu V (r. 1344 – 1359) reigned as King initially at Dedigama and later at Gampola.

He later lost the throne to the son of Buvaneabahu IV and fled to Java.

Vickramabahu III (1359-1374), son of Buvanekabahu IV, was installed as King in Gampola.

However, he was merely a figurehead as the real ruler was Nissanka Alakeswara who even defeated thr Tamil power of Arya Chakravarti, the leader of Jaffna.

Sinhalese troops defeated Chakravarti’s men at Mathake when they tried to attack Gampola.

Buvanekabahu V (1372 – 1408), the son of Nissanka Alakeswara and nephew of Vickramabahu III, was the next to rule.

He fled Gampola to Raigama in the face of attacks by Arya Chakravarti.

Vira Alakeswara then defeated the forces of Arya Chakravarti, but Buvanekabahu did not return.

Thus the Sinhalese kings installed his brother in law, Virabahu II (r. 1408 – 1410) as king of Gampola.

Meanwhile, when Buvanekabahu died, Virabahu’s brother Vijayabahu was crowned King of Kotte.

He made several attacks on Chinese missions resulting in his capture and being taken to China with his family.

Facing execution, the Chinese Emperor allowed Prince Sepanana to return to Sri Lanka to become king.

A new king emerged from the nobility of Gampola: Parakramabahu VI (r. 1411 – 1466).

He was the last Sinhala ruler to succeed in uniting the Island.

In 1450, he conquered the Tamil Empire and the independent Kingdom of Dedigama.

When he died, however, it did not take long for the two kingdoms of Jaffna and Hill Country to regain their independence.

One of the peculiarities of the later Gampola Empire was that it was ruled by a royal double leadership, recruited from the same family.

The co-rulers had to defend themselves not only against the expansive efforts of the kings of Jaffna, but also against the increasing demands for power by their own ministers.

Gampola later merged into the Kingdom of Kotte.

Three empires existed side by side: the Tamil Kingdom of Jaffna in the North and the Sinhalese kingdoms of Kotte and Kandy in the Hill Country.

The political or social value of the Gampola was not regained once it fell to upcoming Kotte and Kandy.

However, the short period of the Kingdom in power saw a new rise of Buddhism.

The longest sleeping Buddha statue in South Asia is located in the Saliyalapura Temple, Gampola.

Among the remnants of the Gampola era, the most famous temples are Lankathilaka, Gadaladeniya and Embekka Devalaya, which lie west of Kandy, built in this period.

The ancient stone scripts (Shila Lekhana) of Lankathilaka Temple helps reveal a considerable amount of vital information regarding the Gampola era.

The statue of Buddha of the temple indicates the style of South Indian arts.

The Ambekka Dewalaya possess a large collection of wood carvings, where no other temple in Sri Lanka owns such a collection.

The town is located amongst Sri Lanka’s central highlands, hence the climate stays mild throughout the year.

Located 3,567 ft. above mean sea level, Ambuluwawa Mountain hosts a hilltop tourist spot that houses a biodiversity complex celebrating environmentalism and cultural and religious diversity.

A notable feature of this complex is a large winding tower resembling a Buddhist stupa, which is located on the mountain peak.

Gampola has a lot of shops and a huge residential area.

There are some valuable archaeological remains located in the vicinity of Gampola which were built under its rule as well as in later periods:

• Aladeniya Temple
  • The only remaining wooden door frame belonging to the Gampola period can be found at this temple, which was once called the ‘rambawa‘ (or golden door frame) temple

• Ilupandeniya Viharaya
  • the remains of Gampola period stone sculptures.

• Walwasagoda Temple and Devalaya
  • Two devala and a chaitya from the 14th century.

• Niyamgampaya Rajamaha Viharaya
  • This historic temple located 3 km away from the city.
  • Sinhala Dalada Vamsaya says the temple once gave protection to the Tooth Relic.
  • Stone sculptures in the temple are considered among the few remains that left by Gampola Kingdom.

• Polwatta Viharaya (Buwaneka piriwena)
  • This is also near the city.

• The Botalapitiya Bo Tree
  • On 7 June 1871, one of the most famous historical events took place near this bo tree: Migettuwatte Gunananda Theros’ (1823 – 1890) debate against Christian priests.

Above: Migettuwatte Gunanda Theros

• Kahatapitiya Mosque
  • According to the lore, an Islamic saint called Atulla, who pilgrimed to Sri Pada in the reign of Buwanekabahu IV of Gampola meditated at the land here by looking at the direction of Sri Pada.
  • The King granted the land to this saint and after his death, a mosque was erected at the place.
  • However, the present building at the place is not older as that much.
  • Other lore says the Henakanda Bisso Bandara, Queen of Wickramabahu III had interred here.

• Ambuluwawa Kanda
  • This 3,515 ft high mountain rises up at the west side of the Gampola, providing a natural shield to the Kingdom and today a shelter from the sun.
  • Recently a characteristic cone shaped stupa was built on this mountain.

• Some other sites of archaeological value are:
  • Aludeniya
  • Ambakka
  • Katarangala
  • Kumbaloluwa
  • Gadaladeniya
  • Niggammana
  • Wallahagoda
  • Wegiriya
  • Sinhapitiya

But what interests me more is the idea of paying my respects to an actor much beloved on British television, Albert Moses (1937 – 2017), best known for the role “Ranjeet Singh” in the television sitcom Mind Your Language.

Moses was born on 19 December 1937 in Gampola, Kandy.

He started to work at the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya.

Then he moved to Africa for employment and finally to London to learn drama and theater.

He was fluent in English, Arabic, Tamil, Sinhalese, moderate German and Sanskrit and excellent in fencing, dancing, singing, motorcycle stunts, karate and judo.

He had begun to act by the 1960s in India where he appeared in several Bollywood films, then produced and directed his first.

From India, he moved to Africa where he undertook work on documentaries.

From the early 1970s, in Britain, Moses played small parts in several television series before being cast as Ranjeet Singh, a Sikh from Punjab, India, in the ITV sitcom Mind Your Language (1977 – 1979, 1986).

He acted in prominent roles in many theater productions such as Freeway at the National Theatre, Phædra Britannica with Dame Diana Rigg and Long March to Jerusalem at the Watford Theatre.

His final film was The Snarling (2018) in which he played tribute to his role in An American Werewolf in London (1981).

The Snarling is dedicated to his memory.

Among his accomplishments:

• Appeared in The Man Who Would Be King (Ghulam), Octopussy (Saddrudin), Scandalous (Vishnu), East Is East (Abdul Karim), among other movie and television appearances

• Produced 13 episodes of Mind Your Language

• Produced and directed Gabriella, a television film produced on location in Malta;
• Hosted, produced and directed a talent contest variety show
• Wrote The Seventh Commandment, a television drama
• Wrote Side by side, a television comedy
• Wrote Don’t talk to strangers, a television thriller
• Wrote The Jokers, a television drama
• Published children’s books Tales from India, The hawk and the turtles, and Mustapha Mouse goes to the city
• Published a book of 87 poems
• Past chairman of the Asian, Caribbean, Oriental and Asian Artistes of EQUITY.
• Ex-governor of a St Albans school.
• Was on the board of directors for a St Albans theatre company.
• Past member of the London regional committee of ITV under the chairmanship of Lord Lipsey.
• Past chairman of the St Albans Film Society.
• Trustee and patron of the Ivy Trust, a children’s charity.
• Volunteered at a local hospital.
• Volunteered at a local school, running a film workshop for children.
• Volunteered at a local retirement home.
• Retired voluntary teacher from a local college, teaching English to foreign students. (See the Mind Your Language page for the irony of this!)
• Moses was a Knight of the Order of St John

Moses died in September 2017 in London at the age of 79.

He was buried at St. Andrew’s Church in his native Gampola.

Teatime in Hatton

Onwards, through Wallahagoda, Tembiligala, Warakapitiya, Ulapane, Pallegama, Warakawa, Nawalapitiya….

A bridge crosses the Mahaweli River.

The Mahaweli River (“Great Sandy River“) is a 335 km (208 mi) long river, ranking as the longest river in Sri Lanka.

It has a drainage basin of 10,448 km² (4,034 sq mi), the largest in the country, which covers almost one-fifth of the total area of the island.

The real creation of Mahaweli Ganga starts at Polwathura, a remote village in the Kandy District. and later joins the Hatton Oya and the Kotmale Oya.

The river reaches the Bay of Bengal on the southwestern side of Trincomalee Bay.

The bay includes the first of a number submarine canyons, making Trincomalee one of the finest deep-sea harbors in the world.

As part of the Mahaweli Development Programme, the river and its tributaries are dammed at several locations to allow irrigation in the dry zone, with almost 1,000 km² (386 sq mi) of land irrigated.

Production of hydroelectricity from six dams of the Mahaweli system supplies more than 40% of Sri Lanka’s electricity needs.

One of the many sources of the river is the Kotmale Oya.

There is a misconception in Sri Lanka that the Mahaweli starts from the Sri Pada mountain.

The Mahaweli gets its source waters from Horton Plains in Kirigalpoththa and the Thotupola mountain range.

Onwards….

Hightenford, Inguruoya, Penrose, Galboda, Dekinda, Watawala, Ihala Watawala, Rozella….

Hatton Station is a railway station on the Main (Colombo-Badulla) railway line in Sri Lanka.

It is situated between Rozella and Kotagala railway stations.

It is 173.06 kilometres (107.53 mi) along the railway line from the Colombo Fort Railway Station at an elevation of about 1,262.5 m (4,142 ft) above sea level.

The Hatton railway station was opened on 4 June 1884 when the main line was extended from Nawalapitiya to Hatton.

The station was the terminus of the main line until the line was extended to Nanu-Oya on 20 May 1885.

The station has a reservation and train enquiry section, ticket office, cloak room, waiting hall, book stall, tea stall, toilet blocks and catering area together with a public car parking area.

The railway station has four platforms but normally only three of the platforms serve rail passengers.

Platform No. 1 caters for trains to Badulla that come from Colombo Fort or Kandy, whilst platform No. 2 is used for trains to Nawalapitiya, Kandy, and Colombo Fort or trains coming from Badulla or Haputale.

All trains that run on the main line stop at Hatton and the station handles a total of twelve trains daily.

Hatton railway station is the busiest railway station in the Nuwara Eliya District and the second-busiest railway station in the Central Province.

Approximately one million passengers use the station during the pilgrimage period to Adam’s Peak (Sri Pada) (which begins in December and ends in May).

The station provides a large waiting room, located outside of the station, especially for visitors/pilgrims to Adam’s Peak.

This facility is only open during the pilgrimage season.

The Sri Lanka Transport Board also manages a joint railway-bus service for pilgrims.

Hatton is a major town in the Nuwara Eliya District of Central Province, governed by the Hatton-Dickoya Urban Council.

Hatton sounds like British Lords and tea time.

And sometimes you actually feel like you are back in the Empire – for example, when you visit one of the many tea plantations with their sonorous English names.

Hatton is a major centre of the Sri Lankan tea industry.

From leaf to cup, a must is a visit to a tea factory, which takes about half an hour.

In this short time, the visitor learns a lot about the processing of tea leaves and tea’s different varieties.

You can visit the Mount Vernon Estate or Court Lodge Estate near Dambulla and Talawakelle as well as the Tea Research Institute on the St. Combs Estate.

Advance registration is not necessary.

In most tea factories, a freshly brewed cup of tea is served at the end of the tour.

Hatton is one of the busiest cities in the hill country of Sri Lanka and is colloquially known as the tea capital of the country, as it is the central point for most upcountry tea growing regions, such as Maskeliya, Talawakelle, Bogawantalawa and Dickoya.

It is located approximately 112 km (70 mi) southeast of Colombo and 72 km (45 mi) south of Kandy, at an elevation of 1,271 m (4,170 ft) above sea level.

The mountain village of Hatton not only attracts with a pleasantly fresh climate, a carpet of tea plantations and a number of clear waterfalls in the area, it is also a hiking paradise.

Hatton was founded during the British colonial times in order to serve the coffee plantations and latter tea estates.

The name of the town refers to the village in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

A number of the surrounding tea estates are also named after Scottish villages.

In this part of the Central Highlands, called Upper Glenn, at altitudes between 1,200 and 1,600 metres, excellent Ceylon teas thrive in this the longest contiguous tea growing area on the Island.

Hatton serves as a gateway to Adam’s Peak (Sri Pada) and Sinharaja Forest Reserve, but is better known for its Ceylon tea plantations.

Over 48% of the town’s population is employed on tea estates.

Everything is so green and sparkling as the first morning of Creation.

The landscape of gently rolling hills is covered with tea bushes and dense emerald forests beneath the backdrop of majestic mountains.

A visit is particularly recommended between December and March, when there is normally hardly any rain and the air is pleasantly promising as the prospect of a fresh new day.

Above: Eden by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472 – 1553)

Back on the train….

Tunneling Through

The Singha Malai Tunnel (or Poolbank Tunnel) is the longest railway tunnel in Sri Lanka.

There are 46 tunnels along the Main Line between Colombo and Badulla.

The longest tunnel is the Poolbank tunnel between Hatton and Kotagala, which is 562 m (1,844 ft) long, 5.5 m (18 ft) wide and has a curvature in the middle so that one end of the tunnel cannot be seen from the other end.

In the middle of the tunnel the gradient begins to decline, with the Kotagala railway station being approximately 23 m (75 ft) lower than the Hatton railway station.

The tunnel was designed by Sir Guilford Lindsey Molesworth, the first Director-General of Railways in Ceylon (1865-1871) and constructed by F. W. Faviell.

The tunnel’s construction represented a significant engineering feat at the time, as it was bored from both ends meeting in the middle.

The tunnel was named the Poolbank tunnel as it runs under the Poolbank tea estate, which was established in 1880.

It is also called Singha Malai tunnel, after a nearby rock formation, Singha is Tamil for ‘Lion‘ and Malai for ‘Mountain‘.

Through the Tunnel, onward, onward….

Galkandawatta, Kotagala….

From Henry William Cave’s The Book of Ceylon: Being a Guide to Its Railway System and an Account of Its Varied Attractions for the Visitor and Tourist (1908):

“After passing Kotagala, the loveliness of the scenery increases until it seems to reach its climax as the remarkable beauty of the St. Clair Falls unfolds itself just before we reach Thalawakele.

The Falls appear on the left and some vigilance is required to obtain a good view through the trees.

The passengers who alights at Talawakele should not fail to visit these Falls by walking to the 19 1/2 milepost on the Nawalapitiya Road.

Two miles further on the same winding road, one of the most beautiful landscapes in Sri Lanka is to be found, where, at an abrupt corner of the road another cataract, Devon Falls, bursts into sight.

No photograph can do it proper justice.

The charm of the view is the setting of the waterfall with its steep and rugged backdrop of rock and the estates at various levels towering above it, while the most distant ridges one by one recede till the farthermost is lost in rolling vapours.

Here are five miles of road that present exquisite landscapes seldom seen by visitors who usually push on with all speed to Nuwara Eliya.

A Bazaar Place

Thalawakale is an important station of Dimbula, the largest of all the tea districts.

The little town has a small population and includes among ist local manufacturing the various kinds of machinery used in the processing of tea and the preparation of rubber.

Some idea of its importance may be gauged from the fact that 20 million pounds of tea are despatched annually from Thalawakale alone.

Thalawakale Bazaar arrests attention, for it is one of the liveliest of native trading quarters.

Here the labourers – men, women and children – of a hundred estates, are supplied with their luxuries, which consist of jewellery, sweets, curry, and clothes of many colours which, without any tailoring, serve them as wearing apparel.

Here too the native rice contractors have their stores, which are of no small importance in a country where the soil is cultivated only for the production of luxuries for exportation and the food of the labourer is an imported article.”

Tourists, look up from your mobile phones and look out your windows.

A Dam Site Better

The Upper Kotmale Dam (also known as the Upper Kotmale Hydropower Project, or UKHP), located in Talawakele, within the Nuwara Eliya District, in the Central Province of Sri Lanka, the dam feeds the 3rd largest hydroelectric power station in the country.

The gravity dam measures 35.5 m (116.5 ft) tall, and 180 m (591 ft) wide, impounding the Kotmale River and creating the Upper Kotmale Reservoir.

Once filled, the reservoir will have a surface area of 250,000 m² (2,700,000 sq ft) with an average storage capacity of 800,000 m³ (28,000,000 cu ft).

The minimum and maximum operating water levels are 1,190 m (3,904 ft) and 1,194 m (3,917 ft) AMSL (above mean sea level) respectively, while the tailwater level is 703 m (2,306 ft) AMSL.

Water from the reservoir will be used for both irrigation development and hydroelectric power generation.

The 4.5–5.2 m (14.8–17.1 ft) diameter, 12.89 km (8.0 mi) long Upper Kotmale Tunnel, the longest excavated tunnel in Sri Lanka, will be used to deliver the water to the powerhouse.

The tunnel begins at the dam site, and stretches north at a distance of approximately 7.4 km (4.6 mi) towards Pundaluoya, before stretching a further 5.5 km (3.4 mi) north-west towards Kumbaloluwa and ending up at its powerhouse at the Kotmale River near Niyamgamdora, at approximately two km (1.2 mi) downstream of the confluence of Pundal River and the Kotmale River.

Excavation on the tunnel was completed and ceremonially opened by President Mahinda Rajapaksa on 4 November 2010.

The powerhouse measures 66.3 m (217.5 ft) long, 18.8 m (61.7 ft) wide, and 36.5 m (119.8 ft) tall, and is located underground at Niyamgamdora.

It has installed electrical capacity of 150 MW (megawatts) from two 75 MW turbines, capable of producing up to 409 GWh (gigawatts per hour) of power annually.

Water arrives at the powerhouse from the dam via the 12.89 km (8.0 mi) long Upper Kotmale Tunnel, which then feeds the 793 m (2,602 ft) penstock.

The initial 745 m (2,444 ft) of the penstock is single-lane, while the latter 48 m (157 ft) splits into two lanes, feeding the two 75 MW generators respectively.

The powerhouse consists of the two three-phase 77 MW, 88,000 kVA (kilovolt-ampere) vertical-axis Francis turbine-generators, two three-phase transformers, and a 220 kV Gas Insulator Switchgear (GIS) substation.

An outdoor switchyard measuring 36.5 m (119.8 ft) by 130 m (426.5 ft).

The 220kV transmission line of the Upper Kotmale Hydro-power Project connects the power station located at Niyamgamdora, Kotmale, to the national grid via Kotmale switch yard located in Atabage, Gampola.

The line consists of 45 towers and has a length of 15.5 km.

The double circuit transmission line has a capacity of 220 MW per circuit.

The construction of the dam, tunnel, and powerhouse, required the relocation of families from 495 houses.

New homes were built away from the site with access to vital facilities such as water and power.

The relocated families are provided with concessionary loans to start new self-employment ventures, while additional facilities such as the Talawakele Central College, places of worship, a cinema hall, a library, and a community centre, are being established.

Similar to most other dams’ impacts on rivers around the world, the Upper Kotmale Dam will periodically stop the St. Clair’s Falls, located 2.2 km (1.4 mi) downstream of the dam, and a further 2.9 km (1.8 mi) of the Kotmale River downstream of St. Clairs Falls, before the river is restored by water from the Devon River, the river forming the picturesque Devon Falls.

As ordered by the government, the St. Clair’s waterfall will maintain a continuous flow of 47,250 m³ (1,668,618 cu ft) of water for 10 hours and 30 minutes daily, between sunrise and sunset.

Heidi and Wogga have already experienced so much before they boarded this train on this day….

The Chaos of Colombo

The hustle and bustle of Colombo, which serves as the island’s Washington DC and New York, a place still fitting Robert Percival’s 1803 description:

“There is no place in the world where so many languages are spoken or which contains such a mixture of nations.”

Colombo is a city inside out.

That which should be on the inside – forts, parliament, embassies – are scattered about the edges.

That which should be on the outside – huge army camps, pelicans, a giant lake the colour of pea soup – sees cows in the courtyards, men chopping logs along the boulevards, cricket (the game not the insect) everywhere, and elephants chauffeured on trucks.

Colombo is Sri Lankan to the foreigner and foreign to the Sri Lankan.

The language changes from street to street – sometimes Tamil, sometimes Sinhala and often something else from somewhere else.

“Everyone makes their fortune, and leaves.“, wrote an English planter in 1948.

“Afghans with usury, Chinese with silks, Indian coolies with rickshaws, Sinhalese make their money and go back to their village, the British work only to retire.”

Colombo is a city built by invaders and invaded by commuters.

Tikak pissu.

(It’s a little crazy.)

The Main Line

It is in Colombo, at the Fort Station, that the Main Line starts.

A journey that once took 12 days by ox cart to complete now takes the sky-blue painted carriages of the Main Line train only nine hours to accomplish.

The first segment of the Main line was opened in 1864, with the construction of the line from Colombo to Ambepussa, 54 km (34 mi) to the east.

This was the first rail line in the country.

The first train ran on 27 December 1864.

The line was officially opened for traffic on 2 October 1865.

The main reason for building a railway system in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) was to transport tea and coffee from the hill country to Colombo.

The Main Line was extended in stages with service to Kandy beginning in 1867, to Nawalapitiya in 1874, to Nanu Oya in 1885, to Bandarawela in 1894, and to Badulla in 1924.

Till 1953, the Main Line operated with steam locomotives.

In the 1950s, service was enhanced with diesel locomotives, under the leadership of B. D. Rampala.

Various types of diesel locomotives were added to the service.

In 2011, ExpoRail and Rajadhani Express began operating a premium section on trains on the Main Line.

These services were launched to improve rail transport’s appeal to the public.

Sri Lanka Railways also began importing new diesel-multiple units to replace the aging rolling stock previously used on the line.

Built by China’s CSR Corporation Limited, the new S12 trainsets are designed to work on the steep gradients of the hill country.

The commuter rail portion of the line, within the Colombo metropolitan area, is planned to be electrified, though no ground work has started.

The original Main Line required over 3,000 workers to construct it – many of whom died from cholera or malaria – using no mechanization whatsoever, through very rough terrain including ravines, gorges and mountains.

For a few rupees more….

Sri Lanka is a land not for the faint of heart.

It is a developing country, where the well-educated cannot find employment, where the average Sri Lankan makes less than €50 / $56 / CHF 53 / LKR 10,445 a month (which isn’t much even by Sri Lankan standards), where 20% of Sri Lankan children are malnourished.

And yet this same nation has produced gemstones that have graced the crowns of royalty, and much of the world’s tea.

While the production and export of tea, rubber, coffee, sugar, and other commodities remain important, industrialisation has increased the importance of food processing, textiles, telecommunications, and finance.

The country’s main economic sectors are tourism, tea export, clothing, rice production, and other agricultural products.

In addition to these economic sectors, overseas employment, especially in the Middle East, contributes substantially in foreign exchange.

Above: Tea plant

More on the Main Line

Heidi and Wogga travelled to Kandy, the city of the blue water lily given as sacrifice at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth (Buddha’s upper left cuspid) in 90-minute puja ceremonies to the accompaniment of drums and horns.

A city of dance performances and flying fox bats and meditation where one can contemplate the hare in the moon and the elephant tuskers on parade.

Above: clockwise from left top: Temple of the Tooth, Bahirawakanda Temple, Entrance of Bogambara Prison, Kandy Clock Tower, Kandy Lake, Pallekele International Cricket Stadium, Sarachchandra Open-Air Theatre

From Peradeniya Junction, the Main Line then continues its climb through tea country, connecting local market centres at Gampola, Nawalapitiya and Hatton before reaching Nanu Oya.

This is the connection to the former colonial resort of Nuwara Eliya, known for its temperate climate, classic hotels and British-style gardens.

The Main Line continues its ascent to the summit at Pattipola, 1,898 m (6,227 ft) above sea level, before descending past Bandarawela to Badulla.

In the upcountry, passengers can view the tea gardens, mountains and valleys, cascading torrents and waterfalls.

And now Heidi and Wogga sit on this portion of the Main Line, said to be the most beautiful journey in the world.

They marvel at the local women in their colourful cotton, water-resistant, two-metre-long sarongs, as the train snakes higher and higher up the plateau of the Highlands.

What little wealth these women have is proudly worn in festive fabrics of tasteful artistry.

Past the Upper Kotmale Reservoir, the journey continues.

Watagoda, Great Western, Radella….

A Token Tale

At Nanu Oya Station, Station Master H.G.W. Ratnasini is prepared for the arrival of the train.

The Main Line is a single line, so precautions must be made that at this junction so that trains will not meet other trains coming at them from the opposite direction.

The Nanu Oya railway station is the 63rd station on the Main Line, and is 206.9 km (128.6 mi) away from Colombo.

All trains including Podi Menike and Udarata Menike express trains service the station.

The station was a junction and branching point for the Udupussallawa narrow gauge railway line connecting Nanu Oya with Ragala via Nuwara Eliya.

The original train station was built in 1885 as the terminus of the main line, as part of the 31 km (19 mi) rail line connecting Hatton to Nanu Oya.

In 1893 the railway line was extended from Nanu Oya to Bandarawela, and in 1903 the station became a junction station when Udupussallawa railway line was constructed.

In 1948 the government decided to close the Udapussellawa Railway, due to low traffic and the tracks were completely removed.

(The discontinuation of the Udapussellawa is somewhat disappointing.

Even though buses now routinely run the route where rail once ran, there is a feeling of loss, of stolen nostalgia, for is it not appropos for a town like Nuwara Eliya, beloved by author Hermann Hesse in 1911 and affectionately named “Little England“, to remain connected by an old narrow gauge line?

I digress.)

Above: Hermann Hesse (1877 – 1962)

The train pulls up to the platform and the train driver is handed a brass ring covered in leather beneath which hangs a pouch containing a metal disc token.

A practice that has been repeated train after train since 1901.

The driver in possession of the token knows that the track between Nanu Oya and the next station is clear, for within the station the Station Master has signalled the upcoming station of the train’s expected arrival.

A wooden box and bell system dominates the Station desk in a manner that a monkey set loose in a library would seem threatening atop a study table.

Ratnasiri pounds down four times on a extruding button reminding one of the pounding of a button in the game of Hungry Hippos.

Ratnasari’s pounding elicits the ringing of the machine’s bell in the same sequence of four, releasing a bottom drawer in the machine from whence a disc token is retrieved.

There is not enough time to discover the logic of a token transport system or the logistics of how the tokens are returned to the Station, for the journey must continue….

Moving to the Music

A young group of boys often gather at the Station and entertain themselves and others drumming and singing from the Sri Lankan King of Pop Clarence Wijeivardena (1943 – 1996).

Though like Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, Wijeivardena has gone on to the Tower of Song, like his American counterparts, Wijeivardene’s music is never forgotten in the homeland he loved.

Above: Clarence Wijervardena

In First Class a guitarist rides the rails and plays folk tunes hoping to par from wealthier hands some precious rupees to keep his family fed.

He is not a musician by trade, but rather a qualified professional.

Perhaps he is an engineer or an architect or a teacher, but like so many young highly-educated men there is a surplus supply of young highly-educated men and a deficient demand for what they offer.

Still he plays his guitar with gusto and his songs are filled with joy, for he finds his life is still far more fulfilling than the back-breaking labour that his father and brothers endure in factories and fields.

His is a life of hope, and though the universal rule that the wealthy are rich because they are not generous usually applies, this is Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans are emotional romantics moved by music, literature and art in all their wonderful forms.

There is a television set in the first class compartment, but no one is watching it.

They are all watching him.

He smiles, he sings, he hopes.

Heidi and Wogga cannot hear television nor musician, for unlike Swiss buses and Australian trains where no one dares disturb the sound of silence, Sri Lankans are social creatures who are always animated in conversation with one another.

If someone is silent, chances are they aren’t Sri Lankan.

The train is packed tighter than sardines in a can, but the ladies don’t mind, for they are by the open window and the landscape of endless green in constant motion keeps their feelings of discomfort distracted and muted.

The train travels on….

Parakramapura….

And suddenly the passengers find themselves traversing a section of the Horton Plains National Park.

Historic Horton

Horton Plains National Park is a national park in the central highlands of Sri Lanka that was designated in 1988.

It is located at an elevation of 2,100 – 2,300 m (6,900 – 7,500 ft) and encompasses montane grassland and cloud forest.

It is rich in biodiversity and many species found here are endemic to the region.

Horton Plains is a popular tourist destination, with World’s End being the key attraction.

In the six months ending in August 2009, Horton Plains National Park earned a revenue of LKR 20.1 million (US$ 0.17 million).

The park is accessed by the Nuwara Eliya-Ambewela-Pattipola and Haputale-Boralanda roads, and there are railway stations at Ohiya and Ambewela.

World’s End is a sheer precipice with a 870 m (2,854 ft) drop.

It is situated at the southern boundary of the park.

Another cliff known as the Lesser World’s End of 270 m (886 ft) is located not far from World’s End.

Baker’s Falls, a waterfall formed by Belihul Oya, a tributary of the Walawe River is named after Sir Samuel Baker, a hunter and explorer who attempted to establish a European agricultural settlement at Nuwara Eliya.

The waterfall is 20 metres (66 ft) high.

Slab Rock Falls is another well-known waterfall in the plains.

The waterfall can be reached by walking on one of the main trails.

The trail is a bit steep at the end but the difficulty level is medium to easy.

The peaks of Kirigalpoththa (2,389 metres / 7,838 feet) and Thotupola Kanda (2,357 metres / 7,733 ft)), the second and the third highest of Sri Lanka, are situated to the west and north respectively.

The park’s elevation ranges from 1,200 – 2,300 metres (3,900 – 7,500 feet).

The soil is red-yellow and the surface layer is covered with decayed organic matter.

The mean annual rainfall is greater than 2,000 millimetres (79 in).

Frequent cloud cover limits the amount of sunlight that is available to plants.

The mean annual temperature is 13 °C (55 °F) but the temperature varies considerably during the course of a day, reaching as high as 27 °C (81 °F) during the day time, and dipping as low as 5 °C (41 °F) at night.

During the southwest monsoon season, the wind speed sometimes reaches gale force.

Although some rain falls throughout the year, a dry season occurs from January–March.

The ground frost is common in February.

Mist can persist in the most of the day during the wet season.

Many pools and waterfalls can be seen in the park and Horton Plains is considered the most important watershed in Sri Lanka.

The Horton Plains are the headwaters of important rivers such as the Mahaweli, Kelani, and Walawe.

The plains also feeds Belihul Oya, Agra Oya, Kiriketi Oya, Uma Oya and Bogawantalawa Oya.

Due to its high elevation, fog and cloud deposit a considerable amount of moisture on the land.

Slow moving streams, swamps and waterfalls are the important wetland habitats of the park.

The original name of the area was Maha Eliya Thenna (“great open plain“).

But in the British period the plains were renamed after Sir Robert Wilmot-Horton, the British governor of Ceylon from 1831 to 1837, who travelled to the area to meet the Ratemahatmaya of Sabaragamuwa in 1836.

The renaming was done in 1834 by Lt William Fisher of the 78th Regiment and Lt. Albert Watson of the 58th Regiment, who ‘discovered‘ the plateau.

Above: Sir Robert Wilmot-Horton (1784 – 1841)

Stone tools dating back to Balangoda culture have been found here.

The local population who resided in the lowlands ascended the mountains to mine gems, extract iron ore, construct an irrigational canal and fell trees for timber.

A six-metre (20 ft) pollen core extracted from a mire revealed that in the late quaternary period the area had a semi-arid climate and a species-restricted plant community.

Since Sri Lanka has a long non-written history, there is a significant and logical folk story.

It is believed that Thotupala Mountain in the Horton Plain is the place where King Rawana landed his aircraft, ‘Dandumonaraya‘.

According to the story King Rawana kidnapped Sitha, the wife of Rama, as revenge for cutting off the King’s sister, Suparnika‘s nose.

Sitha’s kidnapping provoked Rama in India and he led an army that consisted of Monkey-like humans, whose leader was Hanuman.

In the story, Hanuman set fire to the Horton Plains and that fire lasted for a long time.

The original name, Maha Eliya Thenna carries the meaning:

‘The hugely lit ground‘.

Even now the upper layer of soil bears a blackish grey colour.

There had been some soil tests done by local universities and they revealed that the upper layer contains a high amount of calcium carbonate and potash.

For Sri Lankans, the Horton Plains are very significant in their history and culture.

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker advised the British government “to leave all montane forests above 5000 ft. undisturbed” and an administrative order to this effect was issued in 1873 that prevented clearing and felling of forests in the region.

Horton Plains was designated as a wildlife sanctuary on 5 December 1969, and because of its biodiversity value, was elevated to national park status on 18 March 1988.

The Peak Wilderness Sanctuary, which lies to the west, is contiguous with the park.

Above: Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817 – 1911)

The land area covered by the Horton Plains is 3,160 hectares (12.2 sq mi).

The Horton Plains contain the most extensive area of cloud forest still existing in Sri Lanka.

On July 2010, the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka, which incorporates the Horton Plains National Park, the Peak Wilderness Sanctuary and the Knuckles Mountain Range was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Horton, naturally….

Nearly 750 species of plants belonging to 20 families have been recorded from the park.

The forest canopy reaches the height of 20 m (66 ft).

Nearly 54 woody plant species have been recorded from the park, of which 27 (50%) are endemic to Sri Lanka.

Above: Myrtle tree

Frequent fire and grazing characterises the grassland flora.

Grasslands dominate.

Waterlogged swamps or slow moving streams are found in low-lying areas.

Bamboo thrives along the banks of the streams, and near the swampy areas grasses are common.

Tussock grasses are found in the wet hollows.

Perhaps the truly fortunate and gifted observer may spot the Ipsea speciosa (a rare endemic daffodil orchid).

Tree trunks and branches are ornamented with many species of ferns, lichens and orchids.

Old man’s beard hanging from branches adds to the beauty of the forests.

About 16 of the orchid species are endemic.

Other notable plants include shrubs, herbs and tree ferns, some of which had never been recorded in Sri Lanka before, were discovered here in 2007.

There are conflicting views on how the grasslands of the park came into being, whether man-made or natural.

It is now believed that the grasslands on the dry slopes were created by forest clearance and fires while grasslands in low-lying areas were naturally created by wet conditions, frost and soil erosion.

The vertebrate fauna of the region includes 24 species of mammals, 87 species of birds, nine species of reptiles and eight species of amphibians.

The Sri Lankan elephant disappeared from the region in the 1940s but has recently reappeared upon the Plains at the end of the century.

At present, the largest and the most commonly seen mammal is the sambar deer.

Some research findings estimate the population of sambar deer to be around 1,500 to 2,000, possibly more than the sustaining capacity of the Plains.

Other mammal species found in the park include Kelaart’s long-clawed shrews, toque macaques, purple-faced langurs, rusty-spotted cat, Sri Lankan leopards, wild boars, stripe-necked mongooses, Sri Lankan spotted chevrotains (mouse deer), Indian muntjacs (barking deer) and grizzled giant squirrels.

Fishing cats and Eurasian otters visit the wetlands of the park to prey on aquatic animals.

A subspecies of red slender loris, the Horton Plains slender loris is found only in the highlands of Sri Lanka and is considered one of the world’s most endangered primates.

In July 2010 a group of researchers from the Zoological Society of London was able to photograph the mammal for the first time.

In 2016, rusty-spotted cats were recorded in the Horton Plains National Park for the first time, at altitudes of 2,084 – 2,162 m (6,837 – 7,093 feet).

Along with Ohiya, Pattipola and Ambewela, Horton Plains forms one of the Important Bird Areas (IBAs) in Sri Lanka.

Together with the adjacent Peak Wilderness Sanctuary, Horton Plains contains 21 bird species which occur only on Sri Lanka.

Four – the Sri Lanka blue magpie, the dull-blue flycatcher, the Sri Lanka white-eye and the Sri Lanka wood pigeon – are found only in Horton Plains, along with other endemic species that include Sri Lanka spurfowl, Sri Lanka junglefowl, yellow-fronted barbet, orange-billed babbler, Sri Lanka bush warbler and Sri Lanka whistling-thrush.

Many birds migrate here in winter including swiftlets and alpine swift.

Crested serpent eagle, mountain hawk-eagle, black-winged kite, and peregrine falcon are among the birds of prey found in Horton Plains.

Harriers are among the migratory raptors.

This is a key wildlife area.

All six highland endemic birds are found here, including the dull-blue flycatcher, the Sri Lanka white-eye, the Sri Lanka wood pigeon and the Sri Lanka bush warbler.

Yellow-eared bulbul and black–throated munia are widespread throughout the highlands.

Sri Lanka is considered a herpetological paradise in the world.

Possibly about 15 amphibian species inhabit the park, including six endemic reptiles from the Plains, such as the rhino horn lizard, the common rough-sided snake and the rat snake.

Two fish species found in the park, common carp and rainbow trout, are introduced species.

Horton Plains is also home to many endemic crustaceans.

The endemic freshwater shrimp is found only in streams that have a temperature of less than 15 degrees °C and is now restricted to only a stretch of 10 km of one single stream.

Horton Plains was once a part of a large system of plains and forest cover that included Agra-Bopats, Moon Plains and Elk Plains.

Between 1831 and 1948, it became a sambar deer hunting ground.

Elephants and wild boar were also hunted to a lesser extent.

During this period lower slopes were cleared initially for coffee and then for tea plantations.

As a result, Horton Plains and Peak Wilderness became isolated from other forest and grassland areas.

Potatoes were cultivated in the grasslands but planting ceased in 1977.

After being declared a National Park, these areas were reinstated as grasslands.

Tourism-related issues, such as plant removal, littering, fires and noise pollution, are major conservation issues.

Gem mining, timber logging, the collection of plants for ornamental and medicinal purposes, encroachment, poaching and vehicle traffic are the other threats.

The spread of invasive alien species such as gorse, mist flower, Crofton weed, blue stars, brackens and others threaten the native flora.

The introduced rainbow trout may have affected endemic species of fish, amphibia and crustaceans.

Some sambar deer have died due to eating polythene litter that blocked their food passages, and visitors are banned from bringing polythene into the park.

The deer have benefited from the introduced Pennisetum grass species.

A recent threat, first reported in 1978, is forest dieback.

In some areas, especially in the peripheral region, this has been severe with nearly a 50% reduction in vegetation.

Water deficiency has been attributed as the main cause of dieback as droughts are becoming more frequent.

Regrowth of forest is hindered by frost which is increasingly severe.

The forest dieback has affected 22 species of plants.

A study has suggested that low calcium causes soil acidification and increased toxicity caused by metallic elements such as aluminium may be causing the dieback.

Leaching of nutrients and the resulting imbalance in soil micronutrients may also be contributing to the dieback.

Traversing the Horton Plains, the driver must exercise vigilance and caution, for despite his token and the regular patrol of the trolley car that regularly monitors the railroad, there is always the possibility of animals blocking the tracks.

As magical and delightful as it may be to see a Sri Lankan tiger or a wild boar or a sambar deer, a train has a schedule to keep.

Happily, nature is generally more afraid of man than man is of nature, but the driver has long ago learned that despite man’s technological advancements nature must always be respected.

Moody Mother Nature

Few Sri Lankans older than teenagers aboard this train will forget the tsunami of 26 December 2004 – corpses sprawled in fields or washed out to sea never to be seen again, the confusion, the shock, the fear, the sorrow and the suffering, prayers to deaf deities, waves 30 metres high reacting to an earthquake in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

But even before and certainly after the tsunami, wise men know that nature still speaks in volumes and laughs at the stupidity of man to think that he alone is immune from the power that surrounds him.

Heavy rains wash away roads.

Landslides and fallen trees block passages.

Fog and mist obscures vision.

Dew or frost may make rails and roads slippery.

A wise man knows that Nature is a woman and that she merely tolerates man for a time before she makes her power felt again.

She will not be ignored and Hell hath no fury than that of a woman scorned.

Life and the journey continues….

Ambewela….

Timeless Pattipola

Pattipola railway station is the 62nd station on the Main Line, and is 224 km (139 mi) away from Colombo.

It is the highest railway station in Sri Lanka with an elevation of 1,897.5 m (6,225 ft) high above mean sea level.

The station has one platform with a second track as a siding loop.

All the trains that run on the Main Line, including the Podi Menike and Udarata Menike express trains stop at the station.

There is an oddness to Pattipola that is hard to define.

It is as if time operates here on a different dimension.

I am reminded of the description of Mariposa in Canadian auther Stephen Leacock’s classic, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town:

“I don’t know whether you know Mariposa.

If not, it is of no consequence, for if you know Canada at all, you are probably well acquainted with a dozen towns just like it.

There it lies in the sunlight, sloping up from the little lake that spreads out at the foot of the hillside on which the town is built.

There is a wharf beside the lake, and lying alongside of it a steamer that is tied to the wharf with two ropes of about the same size as they use on the Lusitania.

The steamer goes nowhere in particular, for the lake is landlocked and there is no navigation for the Mariposa Belle, except to “run trips” on the first of July and the Queen’s Birthday, and to take excursions of the Knights of Pythias and the Sons of Temperance to and from the Local Option Townships.

In point of geography the lake is called Lake Wissanotti and the river running out of it the Ossawippi, just as the main street of Mariposa is called Missinaba Street and the county Missinaba County.

But these names do not really matter.

Nobody uses them.

People simply speak of the “lake” and the “river” and the “main street”, much in the same way as they always call the Continental Hotel, “Pete Robinson’s” and the Pharmaceutical Hall, “Eliot’s Drug Store”.

Above: Stephen Leacock (1869 – 1914)

But I suppose this is just the same in everyone else’s town as in mine, so I need lay no stress on it….

To the careless eye the scene on Main Street of a summer afternoon is one of deep and unbroken peace.

The empty street sleeps in the sunshine.

There is a horse and buggy tied to the hitching post in front of Glover’s hardware store.

There is, usually and commonly, the burly figure of Mr. Smith, proprietor of Smith’s Hotel, standing in his chequered waistcoat on the steps of his hostelry, and perhaps, further up the street, Lawyer Macartney going for his afternoon mail, or the Rev. Mr. Drone, the Rural Dean of the Church of England Church, going home to get his fishing rod after a mothers’ auxiliary meeting.

But this quiet is mere appearance.

In reality, and to those who know it, the place is a perfect hive of activity.

Why, at Netley’s butcher shop (established in 1882) there are no less than four men working on the sausage machines in the basement.

At the Newspacket office there are as many more job-printing.

There is a long distance telephone with four distracting girls on high stools wearing steel caps and talking incessantly.

In the offices in McCarthy’s block are dentists and lawyers, with their coats off, ready to work at any moment.

And from the big planing factory down beside the lake where the railroad siding is, you may hear all through the hours of the summer afternoon the long-drawn music of the running saw.

Busy?

Well, I should think so!

Ask any of its inhabitants if Mariposa isn’t a busy, hustling, thriving town.”

Station Master Sameera Leyanage knows how deceiving appearances can be.

Beneath the shadows cast by the afternoon sun, despite the calm stability of his trusted man assuredly stamping departing passengers’ tickets for the patient train settled at the platform, the Station Master knows how quickly calm can become chaos.

A missed train, misplaced luggage, foul weather, all and anything can transform this timeless scene of tranquillity into a tempest of turmoil.

The train starts up and rolls away….

It reaches the Summit Level and there a sign informs those who will read it that you are 1,888 metres / 6,226 feet above mean sea level, that you are 224 km / 139 miles from Colombo.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records (and they should know), here we are at the highest point ever reachable by broad-gauge railway in the world.

The train goes through the Pattipola Tunnel, just one of 42 tunnels along the Main Line.

The Pattipola Railway Tunnel or Summit Tunnel, is the 3rd longest and the highest railway tunnel in Sri Lanka.

From Henry William Cave’s The Book of Ceylon: Being a Guide to Its Railway System and an Account of Its Varied Attractions for the Visitor and Tourist (1908):

“The railway pierces the rock and as we emerge there is suddenly spread before us the grandest panorama in Ceylon, a vast mountain ledge of rolling downs, six hundred square miles in extent, forming an arena to the lofty blue mountains that surround it….

The transition is instantaneous and the spectacle startling, especially if, as often happens, we have been enveloped in deep mists in our approach to the tunnel.”

Oh, Ohiya!

The next town on the line, Ohiya, is one of the most scenic places in Sri Lanka.

On a clear day the view from the Ohiya Gap / Dondra Watch extends up to the southern coast of Sri Lanka.

From this vantage point, which looks out over the Haputale valley, the Dondra Head Lighthouse (101 km / 63 miles away) is occasionally visible.

(Dondra Head Lighthouse is a lighthouse located on Dondra Head, Dondra, the southernmost point in Sri Lanka and is Sri Lanka’s tallest lighthouse and also one of the tallest in South East Asia.)

Near Ohiya are:

• Horton Plains National Park – located 8 km (5.0 mi) away from Ohiya
• Ohiya Forest
• The Devil’s Staircase, a road which drops down 1,100 m (3,600 ft) in less than 12 kilometres (7.5 mi), located beyond Udaweria Estate about 8 km away from the station

• Bamabarakanda Falls, the highest waterfall (263 m / 863 ft) in the country, is located 22 km (14 mi) away from Ohiya

• Rahangala Mountain – located 8 km (5.0 mi) away from Ohiya.

Between Ohiya and the next station on the line Idalgashinna are 14 tunnels.

The 5 ft 6 in (1,676 mm) broad gauge main line between Haputale and Idalgashinna is regarded to have a notably scenic view due to the land falling away steeply both sides.

The view on the northern side of the station extends beyond Boralanda and Welimada up to Udupussellawa and Hakgala, with the southern side encompassing Beragala down to the coast at Hambantota and the Udawalawa reservoir clearly visible.

The railway passes by the Thangamale Sanctuary.

The Thangamale Sanctuary is a bird sanctuary situated in Beragala close to Haputale.

The bird sanctuary is situated on an off the beaten path in Thangamale, also known as the ‘Golden Mountain’, and is part of the Glennanore Tea Estate.

Comprising of 131 hectares it was designated as a protected area in 1938.

It is a highland forest consisting of a walking track and amazing views at the top.

Nestled high in the lush green hill country of Sri Lanka, the Thangamale Bird Sanctuary may be one of the lesser known nature reserves in the country, however, it certainly does not lack in giving the wildlife junkie and adventure thrill seeker a unique experience.

Boasting of some of the more endemic and rare birds of Sri Lanka, along with other wildlife, the bird sanctuary serves to be an idyllic setting for the hardcore birder and wildlife enthusiast.

Coupled with some of the more serene views of the central highlands draped in a cascade of lush greenery, the sanctuary also serves to be ideal for the one looking for that perfect scenery, making it all the more enticing for the wide-eyed traveller.

The view from Haputale

Perched at the southern edge of the Hill Country, the largely Tamil town of Haputale clings to a long, narrow mountain ridge with the land falling away steeply on both sides.

On a clear day you can view the Hambantota lighthouse pulses in the distance.

On a not-so-clear day, great swaths of mist cling magnetically to the hillsides.

Either way, Haputale is a spectacular part of the country, with bird’s eye views in both directions – south to the plains and coast, and inland across the jagged lines of peaks receding away to the north.

The principal pleasure of a stay in Haputale is the chance to get out and walk in the surrounding hills – mostly up to (or down from) the magnificent viewpoint at Lipton’s Seat.

Specific sites around town include the tea factory at Dambatenne, the evocative old country mansion of Adisham and the impressive Diyaluma Falls.

The major drawback to Haputale is the weather, exacerbated by its exposed position.

The marvellous views usually disappear into mist by midday, while the town received regular afternoon showers of varying severity for much of the year – September to December is the wettest period.

In addition to evergreen mountains, tea plantations characterize the landscape around the wonderfully situated hill station of Haputale.

Unknown pearls are hidden under the tea gardens in the area.

For example, there is a co-operation between small entrepreneurs who have joined together to form the oldest organic tea plantation in Sri Lanka.

Their products are sold, among others, by the company ChariTea – which has made a name for itself in Europe with their trendy, fresh creations and stylish packaging design. (http://www.charitea.com)

The scruffy town centre is a dusty ribbon of traffic, three-wheelers and small-scale commerce.

But take a short walk and you will be rewarded with extraordinary views.

The railway hugs one side of the ridge in a minor victory for 19th century engineering.

Haputale is a useful base for trips to Horton Plains.

Views excepted, Haputale has little to detain you.

The town comprises a small but lively mishmash of functional concrete shops and cafés, while a small fruit and vegetable market straggles along the approach to the train station, offering the slightly surreal sight of crowds of loquacious Tamil locals in saris and wooly hats haggling over piles of very English-looking vegetables.

The Bard of Lanka

Sadly, little remains of Haputale’s Victorian past.

The principal memento is a simple neo-Gothic barn of a building with a rustic wooden interior.

St. Andrew’s Anglican Church lies just north of the town centre along the main road to Bandarawela.

The churchyard is full of memorials to 19th century tea planters, along with the grave of Reverend Walter Stanley Senior (1876 – 1938), author of the once famous Ode to Lanka, Victorian Ceylon’s great contribution to world literature.

Reverend Walter Stanley Senior was an English scholar, poet and member of the Church Missionary Society.

Popularly known as the “Bard of Lanka“, his works are still widely read in the island nation.

He was also Vice Principal of Trinity College, Kandy, Sri Lanka.

Above: Logo of Trinity College, Kandy

Senior was a fine classical scholar with a remarkable gift for conveying his own enthusiasm for the best in literature to those who were privileged to be his students.

In the opinion of good judges he was the best English poet Sri Lanka has produced – for though he wrote when at Marlborough and Balliol, his best work was done in Sri Lanka and for Sri Lanka (then Ceylon).

A book of his verse was published under the title Vita Magistra (1937).

A common vein in many of his finest pieces is an appreciation of the diversity and beauty that is Sri Lanka.

Rev Senior also has the distinction of being the author of the famous Hymn for Ceylon as well as the Hymn of Trinity College, Kandy and that of St. John’s College, Jaffna.

His best known work however is the soul-stirring epic titled The Call of Lanka, which many consider to be arguably the finest poem dealing with Sri Lanka ever written.

The Call of Lanka

I climbed o’er the crags of Lanka
And gazed on the golden sea
When out from her ancient places,
Her soul came forth to me;
“Give me a bard,” said Lanka,
“A bard of the things to be.”

“My cities are laid in ruins,
Their courts through the jungle spread,
My scepter is long departed
And the stranger lord instead.
Yet, give me a bard,” said Lanka.
“I am living, I am not dead.”

“For high in my highland valleys,
And low in my lowland plains,
The pride of the past is pulsing
Hot in a people’s veins.
Give me a bard,” said Lanka,
“A bard for my joys and pains.”

I offer a voice O Lanka,
I, child of an alien Isle;
For my heart has heard thee and kindled,
Mine eyes have seen thee and smiled;
Take, foster mother, and use it,
‘Tis but for a little while.

For, surely of thine own children,
Born of thy womb, shall rise
The bard of the moonlit jungle,
The bard of the tropic skies,
Warm from his mother’s bosom,
Bright from his mother’s eyes.

He shall hymn thee of hoar Sri Pada,
The peak that is lone and tall.
He shall sing with her crags, Dunhinda,
The smoking waterfall.
Whatsoever is fair in Lanka,
He shall know it and love it all.

He shall sing thee of sheer Sigiriya,
Of Minneria’s wandering kine;
He shall sing of the lake and the lotus,
He shall sing of the rock-hewn shrine,
Whatsoever is old in Lanka,
Shall live in his Lordly line.

But most shall he sing of Lanka
In the bright new days that come.
When the races all have blended
And the voice of strife is dumb
When we leap to a single bugle,
March to a single drum.

March to a mighty purpose,
One man from shore to shore;
The stranger, becomes a brother,
The task of the tutor o’er,
When the ruined city rises
And the palace gleams once more.

Hark! Bard of the fateful future,
Hark! Bard of the bright to be;
A voice on the verdant mountains,
A voice by the golden sea.
Rise, child of Lanka, and answer
Thy mother hath called to thee.

The Master of Tea

Who doesn’t know them – the tea bags with the distinctive yellow label and red lettering?

Lipton Tea is widespread all over the world.

Less than 10 km east of Haputale is one of the cradles of this world famous tea brand in Dambatenne.

From the south side of the bus station in Haputale, opposite the Muslim Hotel, buses leave for Dambatenne every half hour.

His name lives on in the hot beverage aisle of your local supermarket, but Sir Thomas Johnstone Lipton (1850 – 1931) was a major success even before he became the biggest player in the global tea industry.

From 1870 to 1888, Lipton grew his parents’ single grocery shop in Glasgow to a nationwide chain of 300 stores.

Recognizing the potential of tea, Lipton cannily bypassed the traditional wholesale markets of London and went straight to the source by purchasing his own tea plantations in Sri Lanka.

In 1890, Lipton bought five tea plantations (2,200 hectares) at Dambatenne.

His network of 300 stores provided him with guaranteed distribution to sell tea at lower prices to an untapped working-class market.

It also inspired the winning advertising slogan:

“Direct from the tea gardens to the tea pot“.

Thanks to an innovative marketing strategy – Lipton was one of the first to place advertisements in the print media – his name was soon unmistakably associated with tea.

In 1898, Lipton was made the exclusive purveyor of tea to the Royal Family and was ennobled by Queen Victoria as “Sir Thomas“.

Above: Sir Thomas Johnstone Lipton (1850 – 1931)

He boasted that his secret for success was selling the best goods at the cheapest prices, harnessing the power of advertising and always being optimistic.

Lipton’s planet-spanning ambition was not only limited to trade.

Above: Depiction of Lipton by Spy, 1901

In 1905, he donated the Thomas Lipton Trophy for an international football Competition decades before the first World Cup.

The Copa Lipton or Copa de Caridad Lipton was a football friendly competition contested between Argentina and Uruguay national teams.

The competition was held 29 times between 1905 and 1992.

He was tireless in his (unsuccessful) attempts to win yachting’s America Cup.

His well-publicized interest in the two sports ensured his brand became a household name on both sides of the Atlantic.

Lipton was sometimes described in the press as ‘the world’s most eligible bachelor‘, and carefully cultivated a public image as a ‘ladies man’.

He never had a relationship with a woman, using as the excuse that none measured up to his mother.

Instead, he maintained a thirty-year relationship with one of his early shop assistants, William Love, with whom he lived.

When they parted other male companions followed, including an orphan from Crete whom Lipton met during a cruise in 1900.

A close friend was Maurice Talvande, the self-styled Comte de Mauny.

Above: Sir Thomas Lipton

During the First World War, Sir Thomas Lipton helped organisations of medical volunteers.

He placed his yachts at the disposal of the Red Cross, the Scottish Women’s Hospitals Committee of Dr. Elsie Inglis, the Serbian Supporting Fund, etc., for the transport of medical volunteers (doctors and nurses) and medical supplies.

In Serbia during the winter of 1914–1915 and the spring of 1915, several British hospital teams were working with Serbian military and civilian doctors and nurses.

A catastrophic typhus epidemic erupted, killing thousands of civilians, soldiers, and prisoners of war.

Medical staff, however, were among the first victims.

At the height of the epidemic, Sir Thomas Lipton decided to visit Serbia, travelling aboard his yacht Erin via Sardinia, Malta, Athens, and Thessaloníki.

Once in Serbia, he visited hospitals and medical missions in Belgrade, Kragujevac, Niš, Vrnjačka Banja, and elsewhere.

His modesty made him very popular among the people.

He asked only for modest lodgings and requested for meals only what the common people ate under war conditions.

He also liked to pose for photographs with Serbian officers and soldiers.

In addition to visiting many hospitals, where he encouraged doctors, nurses and soldiers, he found time to attend traditional fairs and to take a part in blackberry gathering and fishing.

Sir Thomas Lipton was proclaimed an honorary citizen of the city of Niš.

Above: Modern Nis, Serbia

Author Herbert W. Newby writes in a book about Southgate in 1949:

“Sir Thomas was proud of his successes in life, and any reference to him made in any publication was always carefully cut out and pasted into a book kept for this purpose.

These books formed a most interesting section of his library.

He was a very genial man to meet and always put a stranger quickly at ease.

I met him on several occasions and found him without any form of snobbery.“

Lipton was created a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) by King Edward VII in March 1901.

The following year, it was announced that he would receive a baronetcy in the 1902 Coronation Honours list published on 26 June 1902 for the (subsequently postponed) coronation of the King, and on 24 July 1902 he was created a Baronet of Osidge, in the Parish of Southgate, in the County of Middlesex.

Above: King Edward VII (1841 – 1910)

A portrait of Lipton appeared on the cover of Time magazine on 3 November 1924.

Until his death in 1931, Lipton visited Dambatenne again and again, which he loved especially because of its beautiful location.

The lifelong bachelor was happy to climb the 1,935-metre-high Lipton’s Seat named after him, from which there is a wonderful view.

He died at Osidge (a London borough) on 2 October 1931 and bequeathed the majority of his fortune to his native city of Glasgow, including his yachting trophies, which are now on display at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

Sir Thomas Lipton was buried alongside his parents and siblings in Glasgow’s Southern Necropolis.

The Dambatenne Tea Factory, built in 1890 by Lipton, has a guided tour through the works that is an education on the processes involved in the Fermentation, rolling, dyeing, cutting, sieving and grading of tea.

It is probably the most comprehensive tea factory tour around and afterwards you can sample of a cup of Lipton’s finest.

The long white factory building is one of the most impressive in the Highlands and preserves some of its colonial-era equipment, which demonstrates the extent to which the tea-making process has remained unchanged for well over a century.

The state-owned building complex, situated at an altitude of 1,566 metres above sea level, measures an impressive length of over 105 metres (and a width of 12 metres), making it the longest tea factory in Sri Lanka.

Between artistically well-kept tea gardens, a narrow lane winds up to the point where the Master of Tea supposedly enjoyed the perfect 360° panoramic view in his few solitary hours.

From the tea factory, this marvellous walk leads up to Lipton’s Seat, one of the finest viewpoints in Sri Lanka – the equal of World’s End, but minus the hefty entrance fee.

The road offers increasingly expansive views the higher you go, leading steeply through a perfect landscape of immaculately manicured tea plantations with scarcely a leaf out of place, connected by flights of stone steps and enclosed in fine old drystone walls.

It is quite a strenous hike to the Seat – about 7 km by road – but it is definitely worth the effort.

Once at the top, the almost vertical abyss opens dramatically at the visitor’s feet.

The two-hour ascent (less if you are younger and fitter than your humble blogger) should be started early as the mountain is often covered in clouds by midday.

A life-size monument in bronze commemorates the entrepreneur from Glasgow for whom this mountain is named.

Adisham Jam

Just four kilometres west of Haputale, the grand colonial mansion of Adisham offers a misty-eyed moment of English nostalgia in the heart of the tropics.

Sir Thomas Lister Villiers (1869 – 1959) was a British planter in Ceylon.

He was appointed the European unofficial member of the Legislative Council of Ceylon from 1924 to 1931 and chairman of George Steuart Company.

Born in Adisham (Kent, England) to Rev. Henry Montagu Villiers and Lady Victoria Russell, daughter of Lord John Russell (1792 – 1878), the former British Prime Minister.

Villiers was educated at the Sherborne School (Dorset, England) and left to Ceylon to start a career as a planter apprenticing at the Elbedde Estate in Bogawantalawa.

He left Ceylon and spent four years in Brazil.

Returning to Ceylon in 1900, he purchased a tea estate, the Dickoya Group.

He joined the George Steuart Company in 1905 and in 1928 he became the Chairman of the George Steuart Company, a post he held until his retirement in 1949.

In 1929 he began construction of Adisham Hall, his country house in Bandarawela which was completed in 1931.

He left Ceylon after his retirement and died in Kent on 21 December 1959.

Adisham Hall, or Adisham Bungalow, was Villiers’ country house.

No expense was spared in the construction of the rather forbidding building, with its rusticated granite walls and vaguely Tudor-style windows.

The house was built in 1931 and designed in mostly Jacobean style on ten acres (40,000 m²) of land.

Adisham Hall played host to many prominent personalities of the colony until the retirement of Sir Thomas, after which it was sold to Sedawatte Mills owned by Vimala Wijewardene in 1949.

Vimala Wijewardene (née Silva) (1908 – 1985) was a Ceylonese politician and the country’s first female cabinet minister.

In June 1956 she was appointed as Minister of Health in the S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike cabinet.

In June 1959 she was appointed as the Minister for Local Government and Housing a position she retained in the subsequent Dahanayake cabinet.

On 21 November 1959 she was arrested by the police in connection with the assassination of Prime Minister of Sri Lanka S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, which led to her dismissal as Ceylon’s Minister of Local Government.

The charges against her were subsequently dropped on 15 July 1960.

The incident effectively ended her political career and in her later life she turned to religion participating in Christian revival meetings.

Above: Vimala Wijewardene (1908 – 1985)

In 1961 Adisham was purchased by the Roman Catholic Church and was subsequently converted to a monastery.

At present, it houses the Adisham monastery of Saint Benedict.

It has a relic (a chip of a bone) of St. Sylvester at the chapel.

The house is well preserved along with its period fittings and furniture, but only the sitting room and library are open to visitors.

The rest is a closed area, wherein guest rooms are temporarily rented out to those seeking tranquillity for a small fee.

The property is surrounded by orchards and has a well-tended rose garden.

A small shop sells jams, jellies and liquers all made by the monks.

St. Benedict’s Monastery, managed by Father Michael Ekenuyake, is dependent upon this small shop to maintain Adisham.

The store offers elephant apple (also called wood apple) jam, strawberry jam and guava jelly, selling 1,000 jars per season, each jar storable for six years.

They also sell honey and oils.

Unripened fruit is also used as medicine.

Adhisham can be reached via a short detour from the B353 towards Welimada.

From the Monastery, you can alternatively hike to the village of Idalgashinna.

The idyllic path first leads along a ridge over three kilometres through forest and heath.

Groups of eucalyptus trees line the path.

In the valley you can see the train tracks and the Glenaroe Tea Factory.

The path continues down the mountain slope where it meets the railway line.

Alongside the tracks, follow the path back to Haputale, eight kilometres total walking distance.

Above: Idagashinna Train Station

Back on the train again, past Diyatalawa to….

The lost sheep of Bandarawela

A light drizzle makes the gently undulating green tea hills around Bandarawela glisten in the distance.

The tea bushes reach up to the chest of the pickers who are at work from sunrise to sunset.

They carry large baskets on their backs, into which they throw their yield.

Despite their strenous work, they laugh and tell jokes to one another and watch the train roll by.

Bandarawela is a busy bazaar town, regional transport hub and a centre for agricultural products, with an agreeable climate that makes a possible base for exploring the surrounding area.

At an altitude of 1,230 metres, Bandarawela is an important stage on the journey from Haputale and Ella.

However, it is cursed by heavy traffic as buses, trucks and three-wheelers all jostle for space, often piling up at the central triangle.

Each Sunday morning, an unforgettable experience is the market – next to the bus station – where you could easily spend several hours.

In addition to fruits and vegetables, there are plenty of spices and household goods to buy.

And the market also offers a great opportunity to talk to locals.

However, the price level in Bandarawela is not exactly low.

This applies to the prices in the shops as well as the room prices in the hotels.

So, tourists are drawn to Ella and Haputale.

But, that being said, Bandarawela is a good base for tours of the area and there are a number of passable accommodations here.

Especially noteworthy is the Bandarawela Hotel.

The Bandarawela Hotel is a 33-room British colonial two-star hotel located in Bandarawela.

The century-old British-built property is associated with the development of the hill-country railway and is situated within walking distance from the railway station.

Bandarawela Hotel’s origins date back to the turn of the 19th / 20th century when the railways were being extended by the British from Nanu Oya to the southern highlands as a railway hotel.

The foundation stone for the building was laid in 1893 for a tea planter’s club.

It was subsequently converted into a rest house and was used as a sanitarium by British soldiers and officers recovering from the Second World War.

In 1938 there was a refurbishment and extension of the building to its present capacity.

The hotel had a ‘European Only‘ policy until Sri Lankan independence in 1948.

To this day, it remains locked in time somewhere between the 1930s and 1950s and is an alternative to some of the more modern facilities in the area.

The hotel shows the influence of British architecture during the period of colonial era in this region.

The Bandarawela Hotel is situated over 1,230 m (4,040 ft) above sea level and is Sri Lanka’s first mountain resort hotel.

The hotel consists of 33 colonial rooms with British furniture.

Currently the Bandarawela Hotel is managed by the Aitken Spence group.

This venerable building, built in 1893, has served as a meeting point for plantation owners for many decades, where they would exchange the latest gossip and discuss current tea prices around the warming fireplace at teatime.

This 33-room hotel, surrounded by blooming gardens, is a jewel from the British colonial era.

From the mahogany-panelled bar, where you can enjoy an Arrack cocktail in the evening, to the large rooms with huge nostalgic beds, the visitor is reminded of the beginnings of the Hotel at the end of the 19th century.

So don your pith helmet, walking shorts and long socks and settle into one of the easy chairs and enjoy the classy bar, before returning to your room’s bathtub.

But away from the Hotel, Bandarawela hardly remembers the past.

Traffic roars through the congested streets lined with shops in the bustling market.

Were it not for the surrounding hillsides covered in tea bushes, an amnesiac could be forgiven in mistaking Bandarawela’s chaos with that of Colombo.

Bandarawela is a hub, much hustle and bustle, but in the chaos and cacophony of modern life, some souls get lost and homes destroyed from within….

A pleasant one-kilometre walk leading north from Bandarawela’s central petrol station along Senenayake Mawatha and Viskake Mawatha and past Tamil Central College, the only noteworthy (but very praiseworthy) sight in Bandarawela is the Nazareth Convent of the Good Shepherd.

Here good Catholic Sisters live, caring for two dozen children from broken homes at the adjacent House of Nazareth.

The Convent Chapel is very impressive with its exceptional harmonious aesthetics.

Built in 1962, according to plans by the renowned Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa, the Chapel incorporates modern imagination with tbe Church’s inconspicuous and defiant Norman castle look.

The Temple of Rock

In a wooded side valley, about nine kilometres east of Bandarawela, on the road to Badulla, lies the small and precious rock temple of Dowa Raja Maha Vitara.

This Buddhist sanctuary is known for its meditation grotto carved into granite cliffs and incorporating an eight-metre tall standing Buddha.

This gargantuan Buddha is said to have been created during the reign of King Vattagamant Abhaya (ruled 103 and 89 -77 BC) who resided in the former capital of Anuradhapura but was forced to flee here by Tamil invaders.

A long staircase leads from a beautifully designed gate down to the river.

In the three chambers of the grotto there are wall paintings and various Buddha figures, including one lying on his back.

The paintings in the front hall, dating from the 17th century, show scenes from the life of Buddha and the last three stories of the Jataka.

Other paintings are much more recent – and extremely cheesy.

One of the colourful representations shows the “three daughters of the Mara“, dancing around the meditating Buddha, who want to dissuade those who are about to become enlightened from their path with their wiles of greed, hatred and delusion.

Why the temple and the standing Buddha within were never completed remains an unknown mystery, but the Buddha probably embodies the Bodhisattva Martreya, dating from the 10th century.

A few smaller statues of Hindu deities and some impressive murals that have been carefully restored by the temple monks also deserve closer attention.

But besides the Dowa Temple, the primary reasons for visiting the Bandarawela Region are location, location, location.

Haputale is ten kilometres away and Ella a mere eight.

Horton Plains National Park and St. Catherine’s Seat (magnificent views similar to Lipton’s) are within easy reach.

Particularly scenic views are offered on a trip over the 1,600-metre high Haputale Pass, which leads through the nature reserve of the same name where wild elephants live in dense jungle.

On the plain below lies the Uda Walawe National Park with Uda Walawe Lake, one of the largest water reservoirs on the Island.

Back to Bandarawela Station and the final leg of the journey….

Kinigama, Heel-Oya, Kithalella…..

Mere stops ignored in the thirst to finally, nine hours later, reach their final destination of Ella.

The Girl Who Jumped

Despite Heidi‘s best intentions the backpack she uses on her travels is not always an asset.

It is bulky and does not easily fit under seats or in overhead racks.

She sometimes needs other people’s help with her luggage.

Seated near Heidi and Wogga is an Italian gentleman pure of heart.

He offers to help her with her luggage, getting it out of the crowded carriage and onto the platform.

Wogga and Giuseppe elbow and struggle and fight their way through the immobile aisle folks complainingly and begrudingly making way for those who would pass through.

Heidi is slow to organize herself so she is not as prompt in following Wogga and Giuseppe as she should be.

The train begins to pull away from Ella’s sole platform and now Heidi begins to panic.

Everything she needs is in her pack: her clothes, her money, her mobile phone.

She needs to get off the train….

Now.

She pushes through the stubborn aisle blockers and without thinking she leaps from the train.

There is a dangerous gap between the moving train and the station platform.

Two metres is already a chasm to be gingerly considered, but a two-metre leap from a moving train is a mad move, at best.

She leaps.

She is not as heavy as a horse (especially without the backpack) or as clumsy as an elephant.

She is not as graceful as a gazelle or a goat.

She flings herself across open space, heedless of the danger.

She flings herself fearlessly, for there had been no time to think.

She lands like a cat on the platform.

Within the space between heartbeats, she is:

The Girl Who Jumped.

And there must have been some risk to what she did, for both passengers aboard the train as well as pedestrians on the platform….

Screamed.

Above: The Scream (1893), by Edvard Munch (1863 – 1944)

Were they witnessing a suicide?

Suicide is accomplished by positioning oneself on a railway track when a train approaches or in advance, or driving a car onto the tracks.

Failed attempts may result in profound injuries, such as multiple fractures, amputations, concussion, severe mental and physical handicapping.

Unlike on underground railways, in suicides involving above-ground railway lines, the person will often simply stand or lie on the tracks, waiting for the arrival of the train.

As the trains usually travel at high speeds (usually between 80 and 200 km/h), the driver is usually unable to bring the train to a halt before the collision.

This type of suicide may be traumatizing to the driver of the train and may lead to post-traumatic stress disorder.

In the Netherlands, as many as 10% of all suicides are rail-related.

Above: Logo of Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Dutch Railways)

In Germany, 7% of all suicides occur in this manner.

To deal with an average of three suicide incidents per day, Deutsche Bahn is cooperation with a hospital in Malente offers specific treatment to traumatized train drivers.

In recent years, some German train drivers succeeded in getting compensation payments from parents or spouses.

Above: Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) logo

In Sweden, less densely populated and with a smaller proportion of the population living in proximity of railroad tracks, 5% of all suicides are rail-related.

Above: Logo of Swedish Railways

In Belgium, nearly 6% of suicides are rail related with a disproportionate amount occurring in the Dutch-speaking region (10% rate in Flanders).

The rate of direct death is one in two.

The location of many suicides occur at or very close to stations, which is also uncharacteristic of suicides in other European countries.

The disruption to the rail system can be substantial.

In Belgium where rail service is frequently interrupted due to a high level of suicide by rail, families are expected to cover the substantial cost of rail network standstill.

Above: Logo of Belgian Railways

Trains on Japanese railroads cause a large number of suicides every year.

Suicide by train is seen as something of a social problem, especially in the larger cities such as Tokyo or Nagoya, because it disrupts train schedules and if one occurs during the morning rush-hour, causes numerous commuters to arrive late for work.

However, suicide by train persists, despite a common policy among life insurance companies to deny payment to the beneficiary in the event of suicide by train (payment is usually made in the event of most other forms of suicide).

Suicides involving the high-speed bullet-train, or Shinkansen are extremely rare, as the tracks are usually inaccessible to the public (i.e. elevated and/or protected by tall fences with barbed wire) and legislation mandates additional fines against the family and next-of-kin of the person who died by suicide.

As in Belgium, family members of the person who died by suicide may be expected to cover the cost of rail disruption, which can be significantly extensive.

It has been argued this prevents possible suicide, as the person who is considering suicide would want to spare the family not only the trauma of a lost family member but also being sued in court.

However there is insufficient evidence to support this assertion.

Above: Logo of Japan Rail

According to the Federal Railroad Administration, in the US, there are 300 to 500 train suicides a year.

A study of completed suicides on railway rights-of-ways by the Federal Railroad Administration found that the decedents tended to live near railroad tracks, were less likely to have access to firearms, and were significantly compromised by both severe mental disorder and substance abuse.

Though it is more customary for men to commit suicide by train, there have been famous cases of women who ended their emotional pain in this fashion.

Besides the fictional titular heroine of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, who ended her life by throwing herself under a train….

There are a number of lady celebrities who chose to end their lives in this gruesome way:

• Iveta Bartosova (1966 – 2014), Czech singer and actress, Uhrineves Station, Prague.

Her shocked husband responded with “Blame it on the media hyenas.“, before he collapsed and was hospitalized.

• Dorothy Edwards (1902 – 1934), Welsh novelist, Caerphilly Station.

In her suicide note, she wrote: “I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life.  I have accepted kindness and friendship, and given nothing in return.”

• Margaret Mary “Peggy” Ray (1952 – 1998), American known for stalking talk show host David Letterman, kneeled on the tracks at Hotchkiss, Colorado.

In her last communication with her family, she wrote: “I am all travelled out.”

• Sara Shagufta (1954 – 1984), Pakistani poet, Drugh Colony Station, Karachi

• Zoe Tynan (1998 – 2016), English footballer, age 18, West Allerton Station

According to David Gimlette (Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka):

“The Sinhalese have one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and yet they are also the happiest.

And the most generous.

Despite the poverty, they give away more money here than almost anywhere else.”

“By the time we got to the old engine sheds, the roofs had gone and the army was in control.

There were soldiers everywhere and rows of khaki cots.

Tom shrugged.

Life could be complicated and there were always obstacles ahead: money, pride, history, caste.

The way he described it, I imagined that, however vigorously a man might climb the tendrils of his garden, there was usually a fortress above or the rule of giants.

In this Jack-and-the-Beanstalk world, it was often suicide playing the role of the axe.

“Killing yourself is seldom a gesture of despair.“, said Tom.

Instead it is a bid for contentment, where the limits have been reached.

A few weeks later, I discovered how this worked….

Up in Kandy, a young medical student had tried to kill herself.

I met some of her friends on a train.

They were on their way to her funeral.

But it wasn’t the overdose that had killed her, they said.

She was recovering from that when her boyfriend appeared and gave her a glass of poisoned milk.

He then got a syringe, filled it with insulin and plunged it into himself.

What puzzled her friends was why the boy felt that he needed to die.

Hadn’t he jilted her and then killed her twice?

When I told Dr. Widger this strange tale, he wasn’t particularly surprised.

“Suicidal behaviour provides a legitimate means by which inferiors can respond indirectly to wrongdoing by their superiors.“, he wrote.

Suicide, it seemed, was the perfect revenge.

Even the threat of dying could wipe out debts, bring lovers home or blow away the constraints of caste.

Every year, for over one hundred thousand Sri Lankans, an attempted suicide was an expression of outrage.

It might be no more than frustration at the disappointments of adult life, a wife’s imperfect cooking, perhaps, or her overbearing family.

Meanwhile, some six thousand a year were dying (drinking weedkiller, mostly, or domestic bleach).

To kill yourself was to kill someone else, at least in part.

Once it was even a criminal offence to outlive an adversary, where he took his own life.

“By their law if any man causes the loss of another man’s life, his own is forfeit.”, wrote an English officer in 1803.

Above: Scene from The Shawshank Redemption

That must be a first for humankind:

Virtuous suicide and the crime of survival.”

Heidi had no suicidal thoughts.

She simply did not want to lose everything she needed for survival in Sri Lanka.

She could not ride the rails further without the greatest of financial losses.

Heidi and Wogga part company with Giuseppe and head to the hostel they have booked.

At the hostel, a woman taps Heidi on the shoulder as they are waiting in line at the reception to check in.

I saw you at the station.

Aren’t you the Girl Who Jumped?

Barely an hour has passed and already Heidi is a minor legend.

Five days lie ahead in Ella and the region.

The adventure continues….

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Wikivoyage / Sri Lanka, Muller Verlag / Sri Lanka, Dorling Kindersley / Sri Lanka, Stefan Loose Verlag / Sri Lanka, Baedeker Verlag / Sri Lanka, Lonely Planet / The Rough Guide to Sri Lanka / Henry William Cave’s The Book of Ceylon: Being a Guide to Its Railway System and an Account of Its Varied Attractions for the Visitor and Tourist / Anton Chekhov, Notebook / Arthur C, Clarke, The View from Serendip / John Gimlette, Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka / Stephen Leacock, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town / Arthur Lycett, Conan Doyle’s Wide World: Sherlock Holmes and Beyond / Michael McGowan: Only Man Is Vile: The Tragedy of Sri Lanka / Mark Meadows, Tea Time with Terrorists / Jan Morris, A Writer’s World: Travels 1950 – 2000 / Pablo Neruda, Memoirs / Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family / Robert Percival, An Account of the Island of Ceylon / W.S. Senior, Vita Magistra / Mark Twain, Following the Equator / Gordon Weiss, The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers / Leonard Woolf, The Village in the Jungle / “Women crushed to death in Sri Lankan stampede for $8 hand-out“, Aljazeera, 21 May 2020 / http://www.colombopage.com