Joanna James
The beaches, water sports, wildlife and cuisine are a few elements that add up to a tantalising island escapade. But for your experience to be a total one, you have to add train journeys to the recipe.
After the decades-long civil war came to a stop, Jaffna became a place of inquisitive fascination. More and more people find themselves travelling to Jaffna for a fulsome tourist experience. While you are at liberty to rent a vehicle for the journey, the more fun way of travelling would be by train. The journey is a long one – though not tiring as the exhaustion of the trip is chipped away by the scenery flanking the journey.
During the journey from Colombo to Galle, you'll be travelling alongside the coastline of the country. The scenery has quite distinct features to the hill country journey, which only makes your experience a diverse one. The main characteristic of the journey is the scenery, but in addition to that, the journey is quite peaceful with some people dozing off and others engaged in sidelong glances taking in the soundings. There will also be the occasional vendor selling you wade – a delicious snack made of ground lentils with added spices. While you can travel in the midst of locals, you can also book a private train journey through a Sri Lanka travel agency, but the popular belief is that private journeys extract the fun from the trip.
On your journey to Ella, you get to experience the most charming of Sri Lankan scenery. The train will be riding over the picturesque Demodara nine arch bridge, but if you happen to spend the night there, you can also walk alongside it in the other direction. Having been constructed in the 1900s, it is considered to be one of the oldest in the country – the bridge is built using rocks and cement with no metal substances, though it is as sturdy as ever. The locals call the bridge Sinhala which is down to the way the sky is viewed from down the bridge. Throughout your journey, you can put your photographic skills to the test – at every turn; there will be insta-worthy sceneries leaving you no chance to put the camera down. In addition to the enchanting backdrop, the train will take you through pitch-dark tunnels which amplifies the fun of the trip.
This is said to be the most scenic journey of all and rightly so as the journey navigates through the tea estates of Sri Lanka. The entire journey entails charming hill country scenery and cool refreshing air seeping through the windows. It gets a little chilly though only pleasantly – put on your sweater and sip on a delicious cup of tea and let the cool, damp air takes away all your stress of city life. Tour companies such as Aitken Spence Travels thrive on tailoring journeys of this sort, but you can also do it yourself if you are travel-savvy.
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