Train Trussle

Shortly before leaving the Trincomalee area, I had an experience that magnified my suspicions regarding Sri Lankan Buddhism. Basically, I have this theory that Sri Lankan Buddhist are crypto-Hindus, so thoroughly immersed in the myth that they are Buddhists and surrounded by Buddha statues that even they don't realize it. The most obvious counterargument to this theory (besides "nuh-uh") is the sheer number of Buddhist monks you see around. My counter-counter-argument is that there really isn't anything all that Buddhist about having an elitist, semi-theocratic upper crust of society that performs almost no religious function for society while simultaneously doing very little to pursue the path of Enlightenment, the task for which Sri Lankan society has basically subsidized them for the past twenty-three centuries. Now, obviously I'm not going to diss every Buddhist monk on the island, but I've gotten the impression that a great many of them are useless louts. So that's my theory; fast forward to my last night near Trinco and imagine my surprise to walk out of my beachfront hut to find three rifle-wielding policemen and two Buddhist monks sitting on the patio. I took one look at them, saw they were clearly expecting me to be filled with sudden touristic amazement at the Rexotic sight of having orange-robed monks outside my hut, and took another glance at the cops. They waited for me to speak. "I don't even care any more" is all I said, and sat down at the next table and ordered a Lion beer - an act that shows better than anything else the profundity of my indifference.

The monks, joined by a middle-aged Canadian expat of the kind you find floating around sleepy corners of the Orient of unexplained reasons, soon undertook the urgent task of "examining the truths of the Universe", by which I mean downloading various Apple products for their mobile phones. One monk, named Ananda after the Buddha's foremost disciple, patiently listened as the Canadian listed the various intermediary hacks that would be neccessary for getting streaming Sinhala pop music on 3G service outside of the Colombo broadcast area. With a sudden passion, Ananda exclaimed "I have many needs!", which is either the most Buddhist or the least Buddhist thing I have ever heard. "I have many needs." Indeed. Don't we all. If only there was some ideology at large which had at its core an elucidation of the nature of needs and desires, and if only there were individuals whose life purpose was to confront these very things...

Sri Lankan monks: I rest my case.

Anyways, I left Trincomalee and passed once again through Kandy (which I have decided is a pretty nice place) on my way to Sri Lanka's central hills, a mountainous clump of tea, jungle, rivers, tea, tea, and tea in the heart of the island. On the advice of apparently deluded individuals, I began my foray into the montane regions on the fabled upcountry line of Sri Lankan Ra... Sri Lankan Railwa... I can't stop myself.... I'm sorry but it's coming.... Sri Lank... oh god, it's so close.... SRI LANKAN FAILWAYS.

Let this be known: Sri Lankan Railways is shit. It's not that their trains are huge and miserable; indeed, they are modest in both size and awfulness. It's just that their service is so ludicrously incompetent that for a five-hour period I found myself fondly reminiscing of rolling around India for days at a time in bogeys designed for the transport of medically-quarantined, agoraphobic outcasts from the dregs of a rust-hoarding, dumpster-diving society of malnourished elves dwelling on the far side of the moon. Sri Lankan railways has none of these endearingly atrocious features, but makes up for it by being unable to manage the complexity of running a halfway-efficient service on all three-and-a-half of the country's rail lines. I wanted a simple thing: to go from Kandy to the town of Hatton by train, preferably in some amount of time approximating the two-hour printed schedule. I waited until an appropriate time when I had gathered sufficient evidence before announcing my conclusion that the Railways here are run by a bunch of jolly old chucklefucks. This moment came about half an hour after the train was supposed to have left the platform at Kandy, a delay one would have thought impossible on various logistical and philosophical levels given that Kandy was the originating station. Then, because I am generous, I reserved my judgment on whether Sri Lankan Railways' executive management were career imbeciles or just plagued by having to see the world upside-down with their pants over their heads until I had evidence for this as well. The answer, you may not be surprised to hear, was both.

I realized this when the train (labelled for Badulla on the other end of the hill country) which we were directed to stopped at Peradeniya Junction, a mere 5 kilometers down the line, and every single Sri Lankan passenger disembarked in a frenzy and transferred to a train on the opposite platform. Suspecting that the locals knew something I didn't, I followed out to investigate and found that every single passenger heading towards Badulla had been deliberately shepherded onto a train going to Colombo, and we were expected to flee towards the actual Badulla train at the proper time. I managed to squeeze myself and my bags onto the real Badulla train at the last instant, and wondered aloud why on God's Green Earth it was neccessary for us to take a special (late) train 5 kilometers to get to yet another train while at the same time risking being whisked away to the wrong side of the country on a mystery service carrying no passengers, when it would have been much simpler for all concerned if train #1 could simply approach the junction and -I dunno- turn left. 


After this, matters were relatively simple, involving nothing more than crawling up the mountains and continually rolling backwards and crashing into the neighboring bogeys every time the pitifully inadequate locomotive decided to ease its journey by decelerating from going five miles per hour to going negative five miles per hour. I became more familiar than I would have liked with several clusters of pine trees between milestones 93 and 97, where the train frequently paused, presumably to make sure we wouldn't run over any of the local wildlife, such as the Ceylonese Somnambulating Boar or the Lesser Peraplegic Toad. All told we were merely two hours late to Hatton, which I suppose isn't that bad for a 250-mile Asian journey. Oh wait, it was like 60 miles. Don't ever travel in Sri Lanka by train. But if you do, make sure it's the one the local monks  ride on. Shit's bound to have wireless and a minibar. Better yet, invest in some pirated softcore porn VCD's flogged by the drunk guy hanging out by the side entrance of the village music store, then get a flatscreen TV, an electrical transformer, and a car battery and mount that shit to a on the back of an elephant. It'll go just as fast, be ten times as stylish, and be a hundred times more visually edifying than watching a train engineer scratch his ass in some unnamed stretch of cloud forest.

Extravagant? What can I say? I have many needs.