Colombo - Batticoloa

Our train journey to Batticoloa was luxury compared to the last one! Reserved seats, next to an open window, next to a working fan and snack vendors going by the whole time selling mangoes, rotti and ‘coppee’. So we sit down, make ourselves comfortable and wait for the 10 hour journey ahead. At the station people hop on and off trains and down onto the tracks to get from one train and one platform to the other. As we leave Colombo station with its old rusty carriages we go by the suburbs and slums outside the city centre. Tin roofs and colourful washing lines camp just a few feet away from the track, some of them almost beneath it. Many of them are built on the flood plain as the mangrove swamps and muddy waters next to the track surround the houses just about stopping at the front door. Away from the tracks are half-finished building projects and bigger houses with patios and garden fences. Children play in back yards, chickens and dogs and cats scrounge in the dirt next to them. Every now and then one of the shacks has a tuk-tuk covered with a dustsheet of newspaper tucked under a small extension. For those people lucky enough to have one this will represent their livelihoods. In places clothes are laid out on the grass verge next to the tracks to dry. The odd Washing line stands in between the train lines and sometimes clothes hangfrom a line at the end of a platform. Every now and then men carrying tools and ladies with umbrellas walk along the tracks next to us.

Once we leave Colombo the countryside rolls into grassland and lagoons blanketed with water-lilies. Next, rice paddies where egrets, pelicans and herons dot the water with white reflections and watch the men, women and children hoeing, ploughing and sowing under the hot sun. Some of the workers have wide-brimmed hats to protect themselves from the heat but others work bare-headed and bare-backed. The mud pathways in between the paddies and the lines of the plough turn the watery blue surfaces into a patchwork reflection of the sky. Bright green shoots spring up out of some, disturbing the reflection of the clouds hovering over the soggy earth. Dreamy hills rise up into a hazy blue backdrop to the scenery going by. In between the rice paddies the houses and villages become sparser and soon we leave the plains behind and the countryside turns into jungle. Thick greenery interrupted by muddy brown lagoons. Every now and then we pass houses and small villages hidden in the jungle, where children wave and jump up and down as we pass by. Next to the villages people wash in rivers and lakes.

Every now and again yellow signs go by that warn us to ‘Beware of the Elephants’. Miriam warns me that sightings of wild elephants from the train in the middle of the day are rare - they prefer to come out at dusk or in the evening – so I try togive up my excitement at the possibility of spotting one now. But a while later, just off the track, on the road leading away from it are two wild elephants, just strolling along! There are murmurs of excitement from the people around us and the feeling that this journey is now complete :)

Along with monkeys, peacocks and birds of every colour the journey to Batti seems lush and exotic. As the day turns to dusk we come into the paddy plains again – their workers being called home by the setting sun and the egrets flying away to roost. In one field the trees appear white with blossom (image accredited to Miri ;) as the birds flock in for the night. And with the night arrive the soldiers who join us for the rest of the journey, standing guard at the doorways with their rifles. We are now entering the Eastern region of Sri Lanka, one of the parts of the country where the war was at its worst.