Sri Lanka's
war-weariness is apparent in the first-class 'observation salon' on the
Colombo-Badulla train. A mildewed cabin, the leather of which seats are
so beyond their expiry dates that they look charred, is what greets me,
even as local tourists see no harm in it at all. The second-class
compartment in this toy-train is ironically squeaky clean. Things have
been rather topsy-turvy in a nation emerging from three decades of civil
war.
