Video
Best Train Ride in the World (Only $5)🇱🇰
· 18 min · Watch on YouTube
Best Train Ride in the World (Only $5)🇱🇰
Nuwara Eliya to Ella, about four hours, deliberately in first class so the series has both ends of the comparison — he did third three days earlier. The stretch is the one routinely called the most scenic rail journey in the world, and Harry, who says trains are his favourite way to travel, agrees with it.
Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles.
First class versus third
- $5 a head in first, against about $1 in third.
- What you get: air conditioning, reserved seats, a great deal of space, tray tables, footrests, headphone sockets with a film playing, luggage racks and a lavatory. He compares it to being on an aeroplane. The carriage is nearly empty while second class is packed.
- What you lose, and it is the whole thing: the windows don’t open. He flags it within seconds of sitting down. The reason to be on this line is to be able to lean out of it.
He spends most of the journey in the doorway anyway, which is where the video lives — and where a sign reads that travelling on the footboard is unsafe. His verdict, and the third-class rider’s, is on take the cheapest class.
His price comparison, for scale: $5 for four hours here, against £30–40 for the two-to-three-hour trip he used to make between Birmingham and university.
The journey
- Tea plantations for most of it, then a change of crops and palm trees as the line drops south.
- Branches come into the doorway hard enough that leaning out means watching ahead and pulling in.
- Cloud, then clear weather — the first good weather of the hill section.
- He eats food bought on the train, against his own standing rule about it, and says on camera that he is doing it for the video. A vegetable snack, not spicy, and he is fine.
- He repeats the railway history he gave a few days earlier: built by European settlers in the early 19th century for a Colombo–Kandy freight route (from video – unverified). His added observation is that a goods line has become a thing people fly in to hang out of.
Arriving in Ella
The tone changes at the platform. He calls it tourist city, very Western, very much a vibe, and immediately says there is no way they are only staying two days.
- A tuk-tuk from the station: 300 rupees, about $2.
- Nothing is booked, again — and there are now three of them, which he points out at least splits the cost further.
- He flags a mountain climb ahead, calling it Adam’s Peak, along with waterfalls and a bridge. Which climb he actually means is not settled in this video.
He has already had a look at the hotel and refuses to show it, saving it for the next video.
Key moments
[01:34]First class this time, and why: to show both.[04:17]The windows don’t open.[06:21]Out of the doorway, over the tea.[07:53]The sign: travelling on the footboard is unsafe.[08:25]$5 a head, and the comparison with a British commute.[09:06]The railway history, restated.[10:09]Breaking his own rule about eating train food.[11:59]The other two on how it compares with third class.[13:33]No accommodation booked, arriving in half an hour.[16:20]300 rupees to the hotel.