the same. I made Matt squeeze into the narrow backseat of a yellow-black, three-wheeled tuk tuk, barely big enough for two. It may have not been the best choice to pick a three-wheeler in the dust and smog of the city, but I’d always wanted to ride one. In the front, where the driver sat on a seat that looked more like a stool, there were no doors. In the backseat, the windows were cutouts without any glass. An unused mileage counter shuddered in the wind as the taxi flew down an open highway.
We sped past white-sand beaches. Hard bits of salty rain peppered us like miniscule bullets. Deep blue ocean and an abundant sprinkling of greenery stretched as far as the eye could see on one side of the taxi (my side). The swaying palm trees attested to the fact that we were traveling the outskirts of a huge island. On the other side (Matt’s side), exhaust fumes and clouds of smog that went hand-in-hand with emerging industrialization were his only view. We passed beachfront hotels. Many appeared recently renovated, still bearing the marks of the 2004 tsunami that devastated the region. People streamed through the streets. Street vendors reopened their shuttered shops as the latest threat of a tsunami abated.
The three-wheeler tuk tuk turned off towards the city center and crossed a small lake in the middle. Men in paddleboats rowed casually along it. Huge Buddhist statues hugged the bridges. However, the soothing sounds of the ocean quickly disappeared under a layer of diesel-induced smog and billboards with squiggly writing. Renovated Colonial forts interspersed with glass high-rise buildings. In a cacophony of honking horns and fast-talking locals, the three-wheeler squeezed into a narrow street and through the heart of a bazaar. Shops and department stores advertised various clothing and crafts in rupee amounts. Then, the smell of rice and colored curries hit my nostrils.
My stomach rumbled. Loudly. “Matt—”
He groaned. “We might miss the train.”
“We’ll get another one.” I lowered my voice. “Anyway, I need to get supplies—”
“We’ll get them later.”
I raised a brow. “In the middle of nowhere? Do you really want to watch me wash my undies every day?”
Matt turned red in the face. I almost laughed, not surprised he was the sort that any mention of the unmentionables would send him into a dither. He scowled at me as if to say he knew what I was pulling, but despite a downpour of rain, he tapped the driver’s shoulder.
“Stop here.”
A lunch of yellow curried vegetables with a hint of coconut, white rice, and a mango smoothie (called a “lassie” by the waiter) later, I made quick work of gathering a few supplies. Mostly. When a shop full of gorgeous patterned sarongs, waving in the wind like banners, beckoned me closer, Matt adroitly pushed me into a yawn-inducing luggage store instead. I got a backpack—a rucksack, as he called it—to haul around with me.
An hour after our impromptu stop, Matt hustled me back into another three-wheeler. It was a short ride under grey skies and industrial-tinged rain to the Colombo Fort train station. The sudden jerk of the rickshaw, to avoid an unmindful pedestrian, jarred me. I was holding a metal pole on the partition that separated the driver from the passengers, but my hand slipped and Matt caught me as I flew back into him. There were no seat belts. Matt’s arm went around my waist to hold me steady. His breath blew warmly against my nape. I grabbed the pole that framed the window and pushed away from him, scooting along the torn pleather seat. He let me go.
But then, he was always letting me go.
Inside the station, Matt managed to get tickets on a departing diesel train for a second-class cabin (only a limited number of trains had first-class cabins)—which meant no air-conditioning during the ride. Inside the train station, beautiful, whitewashed wooden railings and walkways crossed over barren concrete platforms below. Like the rest of the city, old Colonial architecture shone amidst modern industrialized steel.
A khaki-uniformed guard with a long rifle walked in front of me. From passing knowledge, I knew the country had recently ended a thirty-year civil war. The Tamil Tigers, a separatist liberation group in northeast Sri Lanka, continually used suicide-bombers to target civilians, until their defeat by the government in 2009. I was glad we were heading toward the middle of the country, and not the north.
The diesel train pulled forward onto the platform: a long metal snake with