Taking local transport is one of the fun experiences when backpacking. Trying to get to point A to B on a rickety bus or tuk tuk while watching your driver weave in and out of traffic at breakneck speeds and witnessing four vehicles passing one another on a two lane road can be quite the adventure in itself. But that doesn’t mean that the journey isn’t sometimes fraught with difficulty.
On our journey to Tissa from Galle, we have to take two buses, making a change in a small town named Matara. When we get to Matara, we end up having lunch in a café by the bus station and get directions from a guy in the café who tell us to wait for the bus at the convenience stand across from the bus station. As we walk towards the stand, a local also gives us the same instructions.
The guy working at the stand gives us a couple of chairs to sit in and quickly strikes up a conversation with Vic. He mentions that the buses are unusually slow today because of cricket (locals are driving around, honking horns and waving flags) and that our journey will take us more than four hours.
There is a Russian trio waiting at the stand with us and Vic points out that the guy who gave us the directions from the café is also helping the trio into a private van. How nice of him. But as time passes and the convenience stand guy rattles on about how there might be a problem with our bus, I all of a sudden get a funny feeling about the situation.
“Something doesn’t feel right.” I say to Vic, and no sooner do the words come out of my mouth does Vic jump up and run to the bus station. He comes back in less than two minutes and tells me they’ve all lied since the bus we want to catch is waiting at the station. We hop on the bus and miss getting trapped in a transport scam of getting lured into taxi/van at an exorbitant price. Instead, we end up in Tissa in the early evening and quickly find a guest house and book a jeep tour to visit Tissa’s major attraction, Yala National Park.
We get back at our hotel at just past noon and decide to immediately head off to our next destination, Ella. We hurry out to the bus station to catch a bus to a small town named Wellawaya, from which we are supposed to catch another bus to Ella.
The bus station is very small, with only a few locals milling around as we end up getting a number of different responses as to when our bus departs. The first guy we speak to tells us 1 pm, the second guy we see says 1:30 pm and then the last guy says 2 pm. After some time and a little more confusion, we eventually find out that there are no buses going out to Wellawaya at all.
Plan B is to take a bus to crossroad named Pannegamuwa Junction, about 5 km west of town, get off at the crossroad and then take another bus to Ella. When we ask which bus takes us to Pannegamuwa Junction, we get directed to probably the oldest and most run down bus we have seen in Sri Lanka. We say to the driver “Pannegamuwa Junction?” as we climb in and he quickly nods yes. I stand near the front of the bus so that we don’t miss getting off at the junction and the driver directs me sit on a metal crate right behind him.
When we get to a crossroad to what feels like approximately 5 km away from town, I ask the driver if we should get off and he quickly says no. At that very instant, a flood of over 40 Sri Lankan school kids come onto the bus and as a group of little kids crowd around me in excitement from seeing a foreigner, I get completely distracted.
After twenty minutes of playing around with the kids, I look up and suddenly realize that we’re on a residential road in the middle of nowhere. Instead of being along the main highway, we are on a bumpy little road passing by tiny local homes and shops. I stand up, try to find Vic across the huge sea of schoolchildren and when I do find him, mouth the words “I have no f---ing idea where we are”. Vic shrugs and gives me his “Oh well” look just before I sit back down.
As we continuing driving and I see us going further and further into nowhere, I start looking around for potential places to sleep just in case we really do end up getting stranded. No such luck. No signs of any sort of guest house or accommodations anywhere. I take stock of our inventory and resolve that if worst comes to worst, we could sleep outside in our sleeping bags.
What was supposed to be a short 5 minute ride ends up being over two hours before we drop off the crammed school bus full of schoolchildren and locals, hit a main road and finally pull into a small bus station. Fortunately, when we get off the bus, an ice cream vendor tells us we are two buses away from Ella, our final destination.
We gratefully buy two ice creams and eventually climb onto those last two buses without further mishap.
