we were a bit more organised with our trip this year, meaning we had a rough itinerary planned and nothing but our first night's accommodation booked! i much prefer traveling this way however it does stress poor husband a bit :)
we landed in colombo expecting to find someone with a sign with our names on it who would take us to the hotel however no one arrived so we organised a taxi ourselves - the joys of arriving at midnight in a strange country!
we were exhausted but with the time difference, we were up at 3am the next morning so we wandered over to the train station to get tickets to kandy on the morning train. they only had 2nd class unreserved tickets and we both thought optimistically, how bad can it be?! the number of people of the platform was an indication of the adventure we were about to embark on but truly, it was just a taste :) the train pulled in and we had to push and shove our way onto the train (some of the locals jumped aboard while it was slowing down, something we were incapable of doing with our heavy bags). once on the train, it was standing room only for 3+ hours to kandy with more people boarding at almost every stop - we could never figure out how we fit more people in as it always felt jammed before and we still managed to fit more. everyone was surprisingly polite, patient or apologetic as they stepped on your toes which impressed me immensely. i giggled the most at the woman who boarded with 5 kids - 3 of whom plunked themselves on my backpack as it was the only spare space and the random sellers who pushed their way through the throngs of people... such a challenging work environment!
we arrived in kandy pretty exhausted from the trip and wandered around a bit before having an early dinner. we tried so hard to stay awake until 8pm to get ourselves on the right time zone.
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