We have recently returned from a five-day trip to Sri Lanka, a fascinating island just a short hop on a plane from Mumbai. One could easily spend weeks travelling round Sri Lanka and only touch upon the delights that it has to offer; but sadly I'm rather short of holiday now so we had to both be choosy and pack a lot in to our trip. Phil - chief of holiday planning in the Earis household - prepared a great itinerary starting in Sri Lanka's Cultural Triangle before heading up to the cool hill country and finishing on the idyllic beaches of the south coast.
We flew into Sri Lanka at a rather challenging time; leaving Mumbai at 3am and arriving in Sri Lanka at 530am makes getting a good night's sleep a bit of a struggle. Undeterred by the early hour and keen to start our sightseeing, we were collected at the airport by our driver, Suddarth, who we had hired to take us round the island for all five days of our visit. Suddarth was clearly used to driving foreigners and seemed delighted that we were comfortable with his driving style, which we found far more moderate that is typical in India. He was clearly used to driving nervous Europeans who are not used to Asian roads or driving! Overall, the roads in Sri Lanka were in very good condition and travel is much less bonkers than in India. Another striking difference between Sri Lanka and India is the lack of litter, Sri Lanka is comparatively very clean which was great to see.
Our first stop was Dambulla, a group of ancient painted cave temples with some of the finest Sinhalese-Buddhist art around (according to my guide book). The caves are cut out of a granite outcrop that rises 160m above the surrounding countryside which meant that we had a sweaty climb up a hill from the car park (which included a tacky looking golden Buddha statue and temple) to the main attraction. The caves date from around 100 BC although they were completely restored and re-modelled in the 17th and 18th centuries. Today, the paintings are vivid and very well kept, although for me, these were not in the same league as Ajanta and Ellora (though maybe I'm being biased towards India!)
The rather un-classy Golden Temple and 30m high Buddha statue
Our transport for the trip, ably driven by Suddarth and equipped with wifi, much to Phil's delight
The rock caves - originally a single large cavern but now divided into five separate areas
The climb to the top...it was a bit hot for me
One of many, many monkey photos taken by Phil on the trip. I quite like Sri Lankan monkeys because (i) they are small; and (ii) they don't attack or steal from you. Two distinct advantages over monkeys in Rajasthan and Simla.
At the top, where there was a particularly attractive pointy hill in the background. Another observation about Sri Lanka is that it is very green, with lots of different shades of green wherever you look.
A reclining Buddha (the favoured position of Buddhas at Dambulla)
Another reclining Buddha
Many sitting Buddhas. A feature of Dambulla is that the same picture / statue was often repeated many times in each cave.
Girl and statue, gives some idea of scale
The front of the caves tucked under the rock.
Next we travelled to Sigiriya, the site of a spectacular citadel on a 200m high rock. Some of the carvings on the rock date back to the third century BC but the citadel itself was constructed in the fifth century AD as the result of a power struggle between two brothers who both wanted to rule the kingdom after their father. What is left now is awesome. A huge rock surrounded by gardens, amazing paintings and carvings on the route up, and a ruined city on the top. The journey up the rock is interesting in itself, along metal staircases screwed into the rock faces, and the whole trip was a lot of fun.
I was apprehensive about visiting Sigiriya owing to its most famous inhabitants...hornets. Apparently there are lots of nests and its important to be quiet when climbing up the rock so these are not disturbed. Halfway up, there is a big wire mesh cage for people to gather in case of wasp attacks. I have few phobias, but wasps are up there right at the top of my list, and I was not happy about the prospect of making some stripy new friends. I was therefore extremely quiet although, unfortunately, the main danger zone had been colonised by a group of Korean tourists taking *very loud* selfies. It was stressful and I was not happy, we left the area as soon as possible!
The water gardens complete with two moats) at the start of the avenue leading up to the rock.
Sigiriya rock, in all its majesty
A friendly cow which presumably didn't have to pay the $30 entrance fee
The start of the (many) steps
The famous Sigiriya Damsels, Sri Lanka's most famous sequence of frescoes, painted in the 5th century, the only non-religious paintings to have survived from ancient Sri Lanka.
The frescoes originally covered an area 140m long by 40m high though only 21 now survive out of an original total of 500.
The route along the rock next to the "Mirror Wall" with lots of medieval graffiti
My Korean friends...
The final stage of the staircase from the Lion Platform up the rock
Two parallel staircases, which provides some comfort of a back up if one falls off
The ruined city on top of the rock
Boy and ruins. You can see it's cloudy and it did rain a bit on our visit. Sri Lanka has a very funny ecosystem with the rainy season at different times in different parts of the (small) island.
View of the avenue from the top
Beautiful hilly landscape viewed from the top of the rock. I can see why they built a city here (probably for defence not the view, but the view is still pretty good).
We saw an elephant being washed in a river on our way back to our accommodation!
After a night in a friendly local guesthouse, we set off early the next morning for the ancient city of Polonnaruwa, one of two great ruined capitals of Sri Lanka. The heyday of the city was in the 12th century although it was abandoned within a century as its inhabitants moved south after an invasion from southern Indian. Polonnaruwa was abandoned to the jungle for seven centuries but has since been restored and is now an extensive site being explored by hoards of western tourists on a daily basis. We started our visit at the small museum which is worth exploring for the scale model of the site and pictures of "before" and "after" restoration for various parts of the city. Parts of the ruins did not look good before they had been spruced up a bit!
Polonnaruwa is definitely worth a visit and, for those with time on their hands, I'd suggest hiring bikes and making a day of it. We were stretched for time and so dashed round between the main sites in the car a couple of hours, which was enough to see everything but not quite the absorbing, atmospheric experience of wandering around at leisure. The other big ruined city is Anuradhapura in the north which looks equally impressive for those on a longer trip.
There are a lot of dogs and cute puppies in Sri Lanka, most of which look to be the generic breed that I call "Indian Stray" that we see here in Mumbai. They were generally pretty friendly except the odd one that chased Phil whilst running.
Ruins of the Royal Palace (I think)...it originally had seven stories
A pretty bird. I know nothing about birds, but the ones in Sri Lanka were colourful
Ruins of the Council Chambers
Royal Baths
A fierce defensive animal of some kind
Grooming mother-son monkeys. Phil took about 50 pictures of these two.
Some kind of circular temple / shrine. There was a group of Korean tourist holding a religious ceremony in it.
Buddha
Again, I can't quite remember, but I think this might have been the Temple of the Tooth.
A huge stone tablet upon which the history of the ruling dynasty was carved.
Big Stupa number 1
This ruined building used to be covered in frescoes and is in the monastery area
Big stupa number 2 - With white limescale covering
Very well preserved big Buddha statues (of which there are lot in Sri Lanka...)
The Lotus Pool
If you like history, culture and things made out of rock, I would wholehearted recommend a week in Sri Lanka's Cultural Triangle. Europe has cottoned on to this, there were many European tourists, including lots of British people, wherever we went and big coach tours were common. In India, we are generally some of the only white faces in a large group of domestic tourists, but in Sri Lanka there were white tourists everywhere. This is good and bad. The sites are much more foreigner-friendly, with organised ticket systems, good toilets, less craziness, but it does feel much less local and the prices have been increased to match. Entry to Sigiriya was around £20 and Polonnaruwa £16 which would be unheard of in India. Only the Taj Mahal is more than £3 to get in and that's for tourists, locals can enter most places for less than 10p. One great advantage over India though is that everything is much closer together and transport is easy - you can see an awful lot with not much travel in a short period of time.
So we finished our cultural focus in 1.5 days and headed for the hills. Suddarth our driver was extremely sceptical about our itinerary and assured us that it would take 10 hours to drive between Polonnaruwa to Ella in the hills (it took 4...) so we had plenty of time to stop for lunch and explore sites on the way.
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