BY BUS TO KANDY
I was ready at 5 a.m.. We left promptly, got to the bus station, the bus, which I thought was leaving at 6 was already loaded and we got on. It left five minutes later at 5:15, the ride took three hours, one hour in the dark and then two in the early morning light.
The bus had almost every seat taken. There were about 15 rows with two seats on one side and one on the other. I have the single seat and Winsor was across from me. But then a few more people got on at the very last second and more as we stopped along the way. Each row had a fold down seat filling the aisle. The last people on walked to the back and folded down the seat, gradually filling the aisle almost to the front. And then the conductor began to collect the fare, standing in the aisle in the front, extending his reach as he stood, without being able to move, all way back. He could lean over to reach the first couple of rows but then people would pass the money forward and pass the money back from person to person, reaching back over their heads. This continued until everyone had paid up. In the meantime the bus had stopped a few more times and pretty soon the entire aisle in the first three rows was filled with standing people. From then on whenever someone had to get off, if they were in the back, the people in the aisle in front of them would fold up their seat, let the person pass and the first person to have given way would take the empty seat of the person who had left and everyone now standing in front would move back a seat to the next fold down seat. This happened again and again with a person making their way down the aisle and the people displaced moving back to fill in the empty seat and then moving back from one folded seat to the next. The whole process of collecting money by people passing money forward and back and the process of people in the back leaving and all the seats being filled in continued until we got to Colombo. It was very orderly, but for an outsider, amazing.
When we left Anuradhapura we must have been near sea level. We passed through rice fields extending away from the road on either side. But soon the land became more hilly, the road more windy, more and rice fields gave way to lush forests of hardwoods mixed with palm trees and shrubs with wide leaves and vines growing everywhere. The roadside became greener and greener and more and more tangled with steep mountains on either side until we got to Kandy, at 1500 feet, where the city was built around a large white walled manmade lake at the city center.
The Sarvodaya center is brand new and large with marvelous guest rooms. We must be paying something to stay here, but I think, while the rooms are as nice as in any hotel, that the guest rooms are used for visitors to Sarvodaya and for Sarvodaya business. Winsor, who for years had an important position as Anuradhapure District Coordinator, one of 23 Sarvodaya districts covering Sri Lanka, must get a special discount. But just as I didn‘t know that Winsor and Thalaka were coming with me to Una Watuna until a couple of days ago, I didn‘t know that we would be staying at such a luxurious, and probably low cost, center at the heart of Kandy.
And then we went out for breakfast and walked around town.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 