Ticket to Ride

by Tom Chesshyre

  It's a short walk from Jaffna Heritage Hotel – past an oldfashioned tailor's using ancient Singer sewing machines, corner shops overflowing with colourful vegetables, a sign outside an NGO depicting a rifle with a line drawn through it (no guns allowed), a stray dog or two, and a cow wearing a blue-and-red bandana while munching on litter – to the city's big attraction. This is the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple.

  There has been a Hindu temple here since AD 948; the current temple is from the eighteenth century. Intricate figures with bulbous eyes and bellies are carved into the orange stone that towers upwards, alongside birds and lion-like creatures baring teeth. The sky is powder blue, and there is something brilliant about the juxtaposition of the orange and the blue. Male visitors must remove shirts on entry. The idea, an elderly man with a toothy grin tells me, is that your heart and soul are opened to the gods. Both men and women must remove shoes. No photos may be taken when inside.

  By great fortune I enter as a puja ceremony to celebrate Murugan, a Hindu god of war, is in full swing. Pipes squeal and drums beat as a procession follows a figure made of pink and red flowers mounted on a silver peacock 'throne' on a platform fixed to two wooden poles, held aloft by ten shirtless men in sarongs. This task is conducted in shifts as the throne is so heavy; those taking over tend to grimace when first feeling the weight. Incense fills the air. Devotees dressed in white shuffle behind as the ceremony, over half an hour long, weaves onwards between tall golden columns. Bells toll. Drums quicken. At the end, after placing the throne in a chamber that is quickly closed to prying eyes, many followers lie prostrate on the ground or kneel with foreheads pressing on the stone floor.

  The city's other big sight is its Dutch Fort, completed during the seventeenth century. Sri Lanka has a long history of foreign interference: the Dutch forced out the Portuguese (who had bases on the coast dating from 1505) in the mid seventeenth century; while the British defeated the Dutch in 1796, assuming full control of the entire country in 1815 following a successful campaign to see off a local king and take Kandy. In the early seventeenth century, the Portuguese had been responsible for putting an end to the ancient Jaffna kingdom, which had ruled in the north since the thirteenth century. The final Jaffna king, Cankili II, had been hung, hundreds of Hindu temples destroyed, and the local population forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism.

  The fort is huge and star shaped, with thick stone walls surrounded by a moat. There are views across a lagoon to a string of islands running in the direction of India – at its closest point, Sri Lanka is just 22 miles from mainland India. From the fort's walls I can see empty lots where there were once houses and municipal buildings that were destroyed in the civil war. Within the fort itself, the crumbling stone remains of a Dutch church bombed during the troubles can be found – the Sri Lanka Air Force carried out many attacks on the city when it was in Tamil Tiger hands in the 1990s. The whitewashed domes of Jaffna Public Library are also visible. This is another tourist stop-off as it has become a symbol of Tamil culture and history after being rebuilt following an arson attack by a progovernment Sinhalese mob in the early 1980s. Outside it there is a sad statue of a man who loved the library so much that he had a heart attack and died when he saw the building burning down.

  The streets of Jaffna are busy without being overcrowded, full of shiny old Morris Minors and Austin Cambridge cars that have been lovingly maintained over the years. Sri Lankans seem to have a penchant for ice cream and there are three excellent parlours near the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple. These are bustling spots and it is not uncommon to see tables of soldiers in uniform, each with an ice-cream sundae.

  From outside the Sooryaa Ice Cream and Bakers Cafe, I flag down an autorickshaw with Art is long. Life is short written on it. The gangly driver takes me on a circuit of the city, telling me how he lived for many years in Saudi Arabia to escape the conflict. I see the massive bulk of St Mary's Cathedral, the local base of the Roman Catholic religion. It's close to a hospital that specialises in artificial limbs – needed, sadly, as many landmines remain. From time to time, the gangly driver points and says, 'Old building' or 'Somebody's cow' or 'This is prison'.

  He tells me he lives in a suburb and has a garden with a small paddy field, coconut trees, a goat, a cow and chickens. 'Never I buy: eggs, milk, coconut or rice.' We pass the bombed ruins of what I take to be the old district secretariat. A sign outside it says: Say no to destruction: never again! The gangly driver tells me: 'My son lives in New Malden' (in England). Then he takes me to the Mango restaurant, where I have an excellent thali meal: spicy chickpeas, onion and chilli salad, coriander and pepper soup, butternut squash and coconut, flatbread and rice.

  'Twelve years in the Tigers and I was involved until the very last day'

  Uga Jungle Beach, near Trincomalee

  Jaffna is a curious city, having so recently rejoined the tourist map thanks to its new trains. But I'm soon on the move. The Palaly High-Security Zone is reached via a big roadside checkpoint. It covers about 6,150 acres of disputed land. Yesterday President Sirisena released 1,000 acres to the original owners, but many others want their land back – as Mr C. V. Wigneswaran, the chief minister of the north, had complained to the Daily Mirror. There is also resentment at the huge numbers of soldiers who remain in the north and east; as many as 160,000 are believed to be stationed among the camps here.

  The roads in the security zone seem better maintained than those outside the zone. Smart flower beds line the turn into the tiny airport, where I wait in an air-conditioned lounge with cricket on the television. It's Sri Lanka versus South Africa; 'Beautifully bowled, totally deceived him,' says Ian Botham, who is commentating. I share the propeller plane with a handful of stiff-backed and untalkative air-force officers, listening to really awful piped music on the sound system.

  Planes just can't compete with trains.

  I'm making this journey to the east coast as I want both to relax by the beach (after the recent run of rides) and to meet the manager of a hotel that has begun employing former Tamil Tigers. The Uga Jungle Beach Hotel, which opened in 2012, is in an isolated spot that was a no-go for tourists during the civil war. The employment scheme seems forward thinking. If the train to Jaffna is going to be popular with holidaymakers, the city is going to need hotels like Uga Jungle Beach.

  Sivabriyan Anandasivan is the resident manager at the hotel. He is a Tamil from Jaffna, in his thirties with a goatee beard, puffy cheeks and a debonair manner. We go for a walk around the stylish hotel, with its comfortable villas, plunge pools and wooden walkways to restaurants and bars.

  Over a coffee he tells me early on that his wife is Sinhalese. 'This is quite rare. During the wartime it was quite difficult. She can speak Tamil very well, and I can speak Sinhalese,' he says. They have been married 15 years and have a son.

  Of the train from Colombo to Jaffna, he says, 'This is a good move. It links people. There is more opportunity to mingle with other communities.'

  Then he tells me about the hotel's staffing policy. 'We have ex Tigers working with us. We give opportunities. They were living in refugee camps – in camps near Trincomalee there were near to three thousand families. They were eager to work but most did not have formal qualifications. We spread the news that there were jobs and some came and asked. Our laundry: most of it is run by war widows. We have fifty-five local staff. Ten are ex Tigers. I am one of the few Tamils from Jaffna in this industry. This area we are in was named a tourist development zone after the war. We bought fifteen acres.'

  He believes that the fall of ex-president Rajapaksa signals good times for Sri Lanka: 'The new government gives a chance for reconciliation. Before you could only sing the national anthem in Sinhalese. The new government has said you can sing it in Tamil too. There are no hardliners in the government. There is willing to reconcile.'

  Sivabriyan asks where I'm from. 'Ah, London. There is a huge Sri Lankan diaspora in London. In London all the petrol stations are run by Sri Lankans. The Patels, the In
dians: the second generation are not willing to take on the convenience shops from their fathers, or the petrol stations. They want white-collar jobs now. But the Sri Lankans are hard-working.'

  I'm introduced first to Suganthini, one of the laundry staff, whose husband was arrested and disappeared in 2008. He had left her without informing her that he was joining the LTTE several years before. She was in a refugee camp for three years after the end of the civil war. Then she got wind of the job at the hotel. I ask what her current feelings are about life and Sri Lanka.

  'I am doubtfully having hope,' she says.

  Then I meet one of the gardeners, who asks not to be named. He is a former Tamil Tiger. He's about 5 feet 2 inches, aged 32, slight and wearing a T-shirt with British Denim written on it. He has a moustache and gentle, protuberant brown eyes. He does not look like a former terrorist or freedom fighter (depending on which side of the debate you sit).

  He says that he was found unconscious on the final day of the war in the area where the last battle took place: 'Twelve years in the Tigers and I was involved until the very last day.' He had been hit by artillery. He shows me the scar on his knee. A Muslim member of the Sri Lankan Army discovered him and kindly sent him to a civilian camp; there are reports of the disappearance of some of the Tigers taken to military camps for interrogation. He says that most of his friends are dead. He pauses and I'm shown a bullet wound on his left arm, as well as the exit mark.

  I ask if he's happy now.

  He replies that he is happy that there is not much involvement with the military any more. Military intelligence used to check up on him once a month; now it is once a year. His job within the LTTE involved riding a cargo boat transporting weapons. He was known as a 'Sea Tiger'. His ship had been destroyed by the air force towards the end of the war.

  We chat for a while by the kidney-shaped pool. Then the softly spoken Tiger returns to his duties, attending to a vine. Sivabriyan watches him go. 'This kind of thing,' he says, 'it satisfies me, because I'm giving something back to society. I have had the chance of higher salaries but I don't want to go because of the satisfaction here.'

  He is not boasting: the words come from the heart.

  Trains lead to stories, and the Queen of Jaffna has many twists to its tale. When I set off from Colombo, I knew that doing so would be opening up the tricky politics of Sri Lanka – far from straightforward so soon after the civil war. The train to Jaffna is more than just another train; it is – as I have found – a way into understanding the make-up of a complicated nation.

  Next up, I'm going west for a ride where I'm expecting plenty of twists and turns, too… in one of the most secretive countries on Earth.

  6

  TURKEY AND IRAN: 'WE HEARTILY WELCOME HONOURABLE TOURISTS'

  BEFORE DEPARTING ON a journey by rail of more than 2,700 miles from Istanbul to Tehran – with a few detours – a handful of passengers is making a train buff's pilgrimage.

  On the hills above the target of our interest we have seen the many splendid sultans' palaces and ancient mosques of Turkey's biggest city; all the usual tourist sights. But as we head down narrow lanes with carpet shops and cafes, a place close to the silvery waves of the Bosphorus is calling. And it's a spot that means a lot in the world of trains into which I am diving.

  Orient Express… the end of the line

  Sirkeci Terminal and the metro beneath the Bosphorus, Istanbul

  The Sirkeci Terminal was the final stop of the old Orient Express service that ran between Paris and Istanbul from the 1880s to the 1970s. The group I am with consists of rail enthusiasts who are keen to take a look, and who are about to join a bigger party on a chartered train that will convey us eastwards across Turkey into Iran, where we are to perform a southwards loop taking in Zanjan, Yazd, Isfahan and Shiraz, before ending in Iran's capital. This will be the first charter train of its kind to complete such a journey – with sleeper compartments – in the modern era. Permission for passage has been specially granted by tourist officials in Tehran.

  We cross a busy road and come to the distinguished but faded facade of the Sirkeci Terminal, with its stained-glass windows decorated in geometric patterns – similar to those in the mosques we saw earlier and conveying a strong sense of being in the East; no doubt the intended effect of the German architect, aiming to impress long-distance travellers arriving in bygone days. Now, however, the grey-stone outer walls are grimy and the pale-pink paint is peeling. Holes by doorways suggest that lanterns and other fittings have gone missing. A forlorn man sits by a booth with a sign advertising a 'whirling dervishes' show. No one else is around.

  None of this matters to us, though – beyond the ticket hall, bathed in colourful streaks of light cast by the windows, we come to a veritable train lover's treat. We step through the curved doorway of the Orient Express Restaurant (opened in 1890) to find ourselves in a dimly lit room with pictures of old steam trains and original Orient Express posters. Tables are covered with stiff white cloths. A straight-backed waiter wearing a black tie takes our order of teas, and as he does so I notice a sepia photograph of Agatha Christie, holding a steady gaze and wearing pearls. Christie stayed up the hill at the Pera Palace Hotel while, it is said, writing Murder on the Orient Express (published in 1934); room 411, where she resided, has been renamed the Agatha Christie King Room. During the crime novelist's time, guests would be whisked up from the Sirkeci Terminal in sedan chairs.

  It is a quiet early-August mid-morning, and the setting remains strongly evocative of the golden era of train travel that the Orient Express has come to symbolise. Sunlight catches a window and multicoloured light momentarily bathes our corner table. We are beneath a high ceiling with original cornices and old brass light fittings with bell-shaped shades. The floor is laid with mahoganycoloured wood. Other than the shuffle of the waiters' polished black shoes, there is silence, as though the room is just waiting for a trainful of scheming vicars, poisonous blondes, mysterious Americans and seemingly respectable English country gentlemen – plus, of course, a very particular Belgian detective with a curling moustache and plenty of whirring 'little grey cells'.

  A poster by our table dates from 1888 and explains that passengers could board the Orient Express at the Gare de l'Est in Paris at 07:30 on a Wednesday and arrive in Constantinople at 06:49 on Saturday, stopping at Munich, Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade along the way. The train is billed as a service rapide sans changement de voitures et sans passeport entre and the advert is headed Chemins de Fer Orientaux. Meanwhile, another promotional poster shows the connections that could be made from London to Paris, Dijon, Lausanne, Milan, Venice, Trieste, Belgrade, Sofia and Constantinople (the name change to Istanbul came a few years after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923). London is marked by a Grenadier Guard with a sword, while a moustachioed man wearing a cherry-red fez awaits at the final stop. A dotted line indicates the crossing of the Channel by ferry; though even in those days some dreamt of digging a tunnel.

  We sip our teas. The waiter wheels across an amusing oldfashioned drinks trolley with a front shaped like a mini steam locomotive. It seems such a pity, we all agree (as all good rail enthusiasts and train lovers would), that there is no longer a regular Paris–Istanbul service, only the extremely plush Venice Simplon-Orient-Express between the cities once a year. The price of a six-day journey in a 'vintage cabin', with overnight hotel stays in Budapest and Bucharest, is £6,340 per person.

  Pondering this, we finish our drinks and hand over a few lira to catch a train.

  We're not, however, boarding at one of the platforms used by the Orient Express. Instead, we leave behind the ghosts of the old Sirkeci station and stroll a short distance to the much newer station of the same name next door. Here, we descend on long escalators to a tunnel beneath the Bosphorus.

  This tunnel opened in 2013 and it's the second part of our homage to trains in Istanbul. We are about to travel through the world's deepest underwater railway tunnel, some sections of
which are 56 metres below the seabed. It's an 8.5-mile engineering feat that, just like the tunnel beneath the Channel, was first suggested in the nineteenth century; an ambitious sultan proposed the project in 1860.

  Down, down, down, we go. Mosaics in passageways depict dolphins leaping in the waves as a train races through the depths. This line is deemed by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to have connected the continents of Europe and Asia by rail for the first time (circuitous routes not counting), thus creating a new 'iron silk road' linking London to Beijing. Erdogan made a big deal of the opening as it coincided with the 90th anniversary of the foundation of the republic.