Sri Lanka’s 19th-century railway line was originally built to connect the remote tea country with the coastal ports of Colombo and Galle. We were taking the central section which is generally considered to be one of the most scenic train journeys in Asia: we would be passing lush green jungle, rugged mountains, misty cloud forests and verdant tea plantations.
As the train lumbered out of Kandy, the scruffy suburbs soon gave way to caterpillar-green rice paddies. We crossed the wide brown Mahaweli river, the longest in Sri Lanka and the rice paddies grudgingly gave way to dense dark jungle. Every 20 to 30 minutes the train stopped at villages with small smiling Buddha shrines and pastel pink or faded orange stations where the platforms had pots of exuberant ferns and palms, and once, a fish tank with bright
