While having lunch in Dambulla, I'd overheard this European (Dutch?) woman sternly tell her Sri Lankan guide that she wanted to travel by train at some point, but that she didn't want to travel between Nuwara Eliya and Ella as she'd heard it was far too touristy and she didn't want to subject her family to anything touristy. The guide kept insisting that the stretch was the most scenic (and therefore of the most appeal to, you know, tourists) but she wouldn't have it -- and instead I overheard as he booked the family tickets on the train between Galle and Colombo.

I learned quickly that they were both right -- the train ride was pretty scenic, but doing it with all of China's tourists pretty much soured the experience. For starters, the platform was crowded with travellers (not just the Chinese families but all the Dutch, Belgian, French and German families, too) and when the train pulled into the station, commotion began as everyone tried to figure out where the first and second class carriages would end up. Commotion is perhaps too gentle a word -- stampede was more like it. You know how you read about those crazy stampedes at concerts or demonstrations where the crowd panics and people wind up trampeled under foot? That is an apt description of the train platform in Nuwara Eliya, as the Chinese tourists literally lost their collective mind when the train pulled up and began pushing and elbowing everyone out of their way (a little like the debacle I encountered when I went kayaking in Krabi, a story I have yet to write about). I was elbowed in the rib, had my foot properly squashed, and basically feared for my life. There was so much pushing and shoving, the local Sri Lankan people could barely get off the train, which just added to the general unpleasantness of the situation.