October 20 Fly to Singapore

We started the day at 5:00 AM again since we took the 6:30 train from Kandy to Columbo. It was a great start since we were able to board the train early and we had been warned to sit on the left side for the best view. 20 minutes after we started the sky brightened and we were above the clouds looking at peaks sticking up everywhere. As the train descended from 4000 feet to sea level over 100 km, the mountains disappeared and the heat increased. As we neared Columbo the aisles were jammed with standees. It was an effort to make our way through the crowd with our luggage.  When we saw the train depart passengers were hanging out the doors. We had gone through 12 tunnels during our trip, I hope there weren't any more before Columbo.

From the train window

Descent from the mountains

Descent frothe Mountains

From the train windows

 Step 2 of our journey was a second train from Ragama to the airport. It was third class only. The tickets for the 40km journey were 0.20 cents each. The doors remain open all the time and the cars have only benches along the wall -like a commuter train The train was fairly empty, everyone had a seat but something went wrong and the train screeched to a halt just after leaving a station. All the kids and men on the train got off and walked down the track to the rear of the train. Just from the sign language and the word death, it looked like someone had fallen off the train and lost his life.

Step 3 - We got off at the airport stop only to find we were still 2 km from the airport so we hopped a tuk-tuk to the airport terminal. I don't know whether tuk-tuks are banned from the airport or whether I negotiated too good a price for the trip, but the tuk-tuk driver stopped just short of the entrance. Step 4 We covered the last 200 meters by foot.

The flight was delayed by 2 hours!!.