Day 9

We left Kandy and drove into the surrounding mountains to visit tea plantations and a factory. The plantations have a British origin, but are now mostly run by locals. A nice lady gave us a tour around the factory, where workers were happy to pose for pictures and some came even running. Most of them were however disappoint, as there were signs everywhere asking to put tips in the general tip box at the exit and not give them to individual workers and the people in our group stuck to that pretty well. Obviously we received different cups of tea at the end of the tour (or coffee for those who wanted that). Staff was already instructed to make the tea weak and the coffee strong, as Dutch preferences clearly differ from the local ones (or from the other tourist ones).

We continued our way through the mountains and I continued to feel worse and worse. Since I hadn’t experienced motion-sickness for years, I thought it must be some residue from the day before and I was wondering whether it was air or something else, rumbling in my stomach. We stopped for lunch in a place with an amazing view, but as it was a long and steep way down from the road and I still wasn’t feeling well, I opted to take the shuttle back up with the old people.

We drove to a train station, where we were supposed to take a train that would take us to the final destination of the day, while giving us a great view of the mountains and the valley. We were hoping to take the 3 pm train, before the rush hour would hit and we’d be taking up places from children and commuters going home. Then Sammy found out from train personnel that the 3 pm train had broken down, so we decided to wait for the 4 pm train and see if it would not be too full with us on board as well. At 4.30 we however heard that the 4 pm train was scheduled to arrive at 5.15, which based on other estimates that we had received that day we assumed to be a very conservative estimate. Since we expected the train to be very full with local people who really needed that train and since it would be too dark to see much of the surroundings anyway, we decided to take the bus (that, with some genius insight, was instructed to wait at the train station until we were actually on the train). Although we were definitely not the only tourists at the station, our large group leaving did receive some attention, so we also informed the back-packing dreadlocks at the train station about the updated time table.

As I was only getting worse on the bus, I ended up in the front seat, which did help a lot, so I guess I am not completely cured from my motion sickness. Since this was the last day with the whole group together, one of the group-members, had a speech to thank Janneke and a small gift for her. He may have been all talk during the trip, but I was less impressed when the talking was performed in front of the group.