For 0.50€ a seat with a view of a beautiful landscape
When you come to Sri Lanka as a tourist, one of those things that you kind of "must do" is to take a train through the highlands. For this reason, these trains are unfortunately heavily frequented by tourists and it is almost impossible to reserve a seat at short notice. On Sri Lanka there are 3 different classes to travel by train. The 1st class with air-conditioned carriages and seat reservation - the disadvantage here is that you cannot open any windows at all to take photos. The 2nd class with seat reservation and windows that you can open and the 3rd class without seat reservation - in which most of the locals travel. Originally we wanted to reserve seats for 2nd class, but unfortunately we thought about it too late and both 1st and 2nd class were completely booked. This left only 3rd class - for which you can't reserve tickets - you buy the ticket just before the train ride and have to hope to get on the train at all due to the crowds.
Fortunately, we got a tip from a local who worked in a coffee shop where we had breakfast one day before departure. He said that the station Nanu Oya (so the one directly in Nuwara Eliya) is one of the largest stations where a lot of people get on and off. He would advise us one station before, in Randella, to already get on the train - so the probability is higher that we get even in the 3rd class the chance of a good seat.
No sooner said than done - the next day we asked our driver to take us to Randella station. He was not as enthusiastic about our plan as we were - for him it meant an additional drive of about 30 minutes on a very narrow road, where you could only pray that there would be no oncoming traffic. Punctually at 08:00 in the morning we were then at the station, because the planned departure of the train was scheduled for about 08:30. A funny picture has offered itself to us there - it was not even a railroad employee there for ticket sales, many locals have walked directly on the rails and only street dogs have slept on the platform.

Gradually, this small station that felt in the middle of nowhere (I think in the immediate vicinity were a handful of houses and otherwise only tea plantations) has filled with the train staff and a few local train passengers. We bought our tickets for the equivalent of 0.5€ per ticket for 3rd class. With some delay the train arrived and we got on - it was really not much going on yet and we were able to get seats - no seats at the window, but at least we were seated.
The train ride to the next station to Nanu Oya took about 10 minutes. There at the platform, as predicted, incredibly many people were waiting, both locals and tourists. Fortunately, our plan worked out exactly - the train stopped and some train passengers left the train here. As soon as they got up we grabbed 2 super window seats. Most of the passengers who got on here didn't get a seat, and certainly not a window seat! So our plan has worked 100%.

The train ride was great - through the highlands from Nuwara Eliya to Ella you see this incredibly beautiful nature, especially the vastness of the tea plantations. On the way it has then started to rain heavily - also this was quite a nice picture or an extremely cool mood with this landscape.
A small highlight for me were the stations where our train stopped during the trip.

At each of these stations there were plants in pots on the platforms. I think these were for sale, but in addition they made the stations very decorative - a nice greening idea.
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