Of rogues and buses
The title (in the blog, not here), I am told, is getting boring. But the title also gets picked up well by RSS aggregators and helps folk search for articles on Sri Lanka.
I wonder if Kandy is the true home of the scam artist?
We wanted to catch the train to Nuwara Eliya. We were heading for high country, just under the ceiling of our medical insurance. The train goes most of the way there, and the views from the train were reputed to be spectacular.
Early train, change at Peradeniya, and bumble off for about four hours to a station 8km from the town, finishing by bus.
Or so we thought.
We decided on first class. That guarantees you a seat, kind of, probably, if and only if you buy the first class ticket at the station you change at, not where you start your journey. Maybe. Anyway, we’d done 2nd class from Colombo Fort to Kandy, and it was just a tad too full of boxes of live chickens for us!
The ticket window has infuriating staff behind it that ignore you until the train is almost due. They allowed us to pay 30 rupees each for the short leg to Peradeniya Junction. On the platform we met a young man who was heading the exact same way. "The train we have to change on to is 4 hours late," he said. "There has been a derailment."
We chatted aimlessly, while I took pictures of the station. Then a Kandy bound train arrived. "I know the guard. I’ll find out about the train." and he dived across the tracks to the inbound guard’s van. While he was there our train arrived.
"It’s now five hours late," he said. I am going to look for a bus.
We agreed and followed him. Always use local knowledge at SriLankan bus stations if you can. They’re organised chaos.
"No bus until this afternoon," he said, "I am going home to get my motorcycle." And then he said "I could help you some more. I could get my car and we could share petrol. $75 from you and $25 from me."
Even at 157 rupees per litre that means his car has a pretty large fuel tank and does very few km per litre! Very politely we declined his offer. I admit that I felt totally lost for a moment. Then Al, veteran of many Indian bus journeys, headed for the bus station office.
"Not only is there a bus leaving in a few minutes, it’s an air conditioned bus, and the fare is only 200 rupees each! And, even better than that, there are buses all the time! That bloke was lying through his teeth!"
We got on. We had comfy seats, still plastic wrapped, still new enough for the plastic wrapping not to be too cracked. And, insanely, the bus left before it was even a quarter full. Sri Lankan buses do not leave before they’re full, there’s no way they can possibly make a profit if they do.
What’s meant to happen is that the bus boy yells the destination at the bus station and at every group of people the bus passes. And it travels from town to town getting fuller and fuller until the only room left is fuller than you could ever expect. Not this bus. To me it looked as if they made about 2,000 rupees on a trip that cost 3,000 in diesel. Very odd.
The trip only took two and a half hours. That beat the train hollow. And 600 rupees versus 7,500 with railway scam boy was good news.
Something tells me that he wasn’t travelling anywhere that day. He just saw tourists in the ticket queue and thought "Yes, there is some cash for me!"
The trip was twisty, and we climbed about 1,500 metres up the mountains. I only got nauseous once! And we arrived in Nuwara Eliya, always pronounced "Nurellia".
It wasn’t as chilly as we’d been led to believe. And it wasn't even raining. But schoolboys were wearing school pullovers.