The next day, Saturday, we got up early and left for Sigiriya at 5:30am, with Namil, the General, driving us, and Ajit, the principal accompanying us again. It is about a 2 hour drive and leaving this early let us avoid the traffic and arrive early, which turned out to be important.
Sigiriya is a UNESCO World Heritage Site centered around a 650 ft tall column of rock. About 1500 years ago a Sri Lanka king built his palace on the top.
There were lots of ruins surrounding the main attraction, but Yanmei wanted to hurry to the rock to start climbing.
Boulder Arch.
Mirror wall. In the ancient past this wall was supposedly polished so smoothly you could see your reflection in it. Now it is covered in graffiti, but some of the graffiti itself is over 1200 years old. Above the wall you can see a spiral staircase leading up to a cave, the cave contains ancient paintings of topless women. No photos were allowed in this area. They think the entire side of the mountain may have been painted at one point, but only the paintings sheltered in the cave survived.
Just before the spiral staircase you can see a sign.
This was a bit scary. If there was a wasp attack, people panicking and pushing on these narrow and steep steps would be a nightmare. We got through there to a small plateau where the lion’s paw entrance was. There used to be a lion’s head above the entrance, but unfortunately it collapsed a long time ago. You can see some holes in the rock where they attached it.
Finally we made the summit. I was drenched with sweat, but the views were spectacular. The video below gives a better feel for it than pictures. Yanmei forgot she was recording, so it has a very natural feel.
It really is incredible the amount of effort it must have taken to build this on top of almost sheer cliffs. They must have hauled millions of bricks up by hand.
Heading back down is not very easy either. View from above down to the Lion Paw plateau:
On the plateau we saw some monkeys.
Yanmei fed him a couple of shelled peanuts she had bought the previous day from a street vendor. He seemed to like them more than the banana and started following her which made her nervous. Fortunately he wasn’t very persistent.
As we got back to the base we saw the way up was completely jam packed with people moving at a snail’s pace, if at all, and baking in the afternoon sun. I saw so glad we got up early and beat the crowd.
We finally got to the bottom. Yanmei bought me a souvenir T-shirt and we headed back to the car. After a short drive to get us out of the immediate tourist area, Namil stopped at a roadside vendor to buy us coconuts. The coconut water is great when you are dehydrated because it contains electrolytes. After drinking the water they split the coconut so you can eat the soft flesh. There isn’t much flesh because these are young coconuts mostly full of water. This was the best coconut I’ve ever had, so sweet and refreshing.
On the way back to Kandy, we stopped at the Dambulla cave temple, which is a Buddhist temple and monastery inside a cave system. It dates back to the third century B.C. and was made into a temple in the first century B.C. and is still in use today. This is also a World Heritage Site.
Up some more steps…
Temple entrance and interior.
Finally we went back to Kandy for a rest.
Yanmei still had enough energy for a quick Sri Lankan cooking lesson from our host Chitra.
Another great day in Sri Lanka!
David
