{"id":387,"date":"2017-01-01T06:20:11","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T06:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slingadventures.com\/?p=387"},"modified":"2018-08-20T06:29:12","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T20:29:12","slug":"kandy-to-ella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slingadventures.com\/destinations\/sri-lanka\/kandy-to-ella","title":{"rendered":"Kandy to Ella Train Ride"},"content":{"rendered":"The situation was. Peak travel season in Sri Lanka for tourists and locals alike. The famous Kandy to Ella train ride through the hilly tea plantations was fully booked. 2nd and 3rd class unreserved can never fill up so it's our only option. The challenge remained to secure a seat on what was a 6-8 hour train ride.\r\n\r\nThe train originates in Colombo at 3am arriving in Kandy at 8:30am. Knowing Kandy is likely to be the main boarding point we headed for a station just before Kandy called Perideniya. This in the attempt to secure any vacant seats left by departing passengers in Kandy before any\u00a0passengers boarding at Kandy have a chance to snare them. It was a cunning plan.\r\n\r\nTuk-tuk is hailed to take us Perideniya station. On arrival we discovered some others had the same idea. We paid the 230 rupees for the ticket ($2.30 AUD). The train arrived and we boarded. Onboard\u00a0there was standing room only as suspected. We began to eye ball the seated passengers for any sign they were preparing to alight at Kandy. Place your bets! About 5 mins out from Kandy it became clear that a family of 4-5 were due to get off. Already a few had made motions to secure the seats including one girl sliding her bag onto the seat behind a man in an isle seat getting ready to leave. It was getting tense.\r\n\r\n