We wake. . .

. .and head a short distance into town (village?) to catch the morning train west to Nuwara Eliya. The train system is a purposeful single line colonial-era project of British tea merchants and investors, an artery leading to and from the healthy heart of the country. The train station is scale-model quaint and looks unchanged since its construction over a century ago. Gorgeous hand painted signs announce track times and a manpowered rail cart clacks past like a cartoon. The heavy coal-bellowing engine pulls in and we take a seat in second class.

We chug out of the station and begin one of the most memorable, heart-hurtingly beautiful trips I've had. The weather is perfect, and time dilates looking out on a pretty fair definition of paradise. Undulating hills are pocked with low tea shrubs, each one a slightly different green. Creamy lozenges of clouds filter dappling yellow light down on distant miniature farms. We punch through a mountain in a dark minute, the kids on board hooting out to hear their echoes ricochet back. Rail-side houses empty to wave the approaching train, their corrugated roofs laid with the colours of the day's drying laundry. Mammoth trees remind me of childhood dinosaur books, bone coloured trunks blurring by like a monstrous picket fence. There are clackety bridges crossing bouldery ravines and wide leaved banana trees ripe with fruit.

The hypnotic sway of the coach is lulling, but I'm startled by a hollering voice outside our window. I look out to see a wild eyed man the size of a jockey swinging from the steps of our car, holding on casually with one hand and shouting through a few missing teeth. Now with an audience, he starts to make more of a show, but is silenced when a thick sapling whips him audibly in the face and he almost falls from the train. He comes in and sits with us, not speaking a word of english, but loquacious nonetheless. Actually, he's mostly repeating something that sounds like "HORSE" and making the gesture of what I think is a waterfall. He talks for about an hour and a half, and in honest appraisal, we think it was mostly about an old horse he owned with 4 penises. I'm serious! I'm not even being crass; you would have gotten the exact same thing out of the conversation. His breath is atrocious, however, and there's a very real fermented-milk-product smell in our area by the time he changes seats.


The trip is suddenly over, and we disembark to walk to our hotel, stopping at a fruit market to be royally ripped off by duplicitous vendors offering samples to eat, and eat and eat, and then to be charged an arm and a leg for. Lesson learned: I will never eat fruit again. We check into our hotel, it's bizarre but fun. By the looks of the overdressed English bar, they went back in time, hired a prominent saloon architect/interior design firm from the wild west, then brought them to the future and fed them acid until they came up with the drawings. We unpack and then walk up the street to explore a previous hotel candidate, the austere Ceylon Hill Club. The Hill club was constructed in the late 18th century, a towering stone gentleman's retreat to offer displaced English dandies a taste of home. It's off-season and rather empty, smacking ominously of scenes from the Shining. Conforming to club doctrine, we purchase a temporary day membership each, signing in under pseudonyms, though the most flowery name I can muster is Ted Theodore Logan, Esquire. Not sure what that says about me. As expected, the place is so surreal that it's hard to keep a straight face in front of our dry, white gloved tour guide. Pretty much every wall panel supports a brain-damaged taxidermy animal bust of some sort, coated with at least a half inch of yellowing shellac. We walk under drooling mongoloid bears and squishy faced fawn lobotomies, past weathered area maps, inscrutable cartoons about polo and fox hunting trophies presented to someone named "Old Scrubby". There is a "mixed" lounge where ladies are allowed, and a billiard room for the good old boys. Next over, a long dining room fans outward from a vast fireplace, windows facing a grand topiary garden and manicured lawn. We collect ourselves, peruse the menu, smile at each other, and formulate a plan for the night. This will take some finessing.

Music: Helios: Coalescence

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