Anuradhapura 01.02-04.02
The next morning after we arrived in Sri Lanka we headed
straight to explore Anuradhapura. This is the first ancient religious capital
of Sri Lanka . Our guide for the day was Eddie who was approximately 80 years
old, an ex-archaeologist and absolute expert on the area (we know because he
showed us several newspaper cuttings of himself which he proudly kept in his
satchel). He walked with a cane and had to have an inhaler every now and again
but his fitness and wisdom were seriously admirable. We walked/drove a huge part of the complex
although only 20% of the area has been excavated. The city was home to 2
million people during it’s time. The complexity of the architecture is
incredible as to think that people created these buildings by sheer man power.
For dinner that evening we tried a Sri Lankan dish called
Develled Chicken which reminded us a little of sweet and sour, as it’s served
with rice, pineapple and tomatoes. It tasted good! For desert our waiter called
Kumar recommended we try banana fritters so we ordered one portion to share.
After taking our order he returned to the kitchen only to return minutes later sprinting out of
the hotel front gate. We were praying he hadn’t had to run into town for
ingredients for our desert but about 10 minutes later (he was really out of
breath) he came back holding a banana shaped plastic bag! We felt bad but we
ensured that he knew we REALLY liked the banana fritters!
N
Mihintale 03.02
Chaminda drove us to Mihintale today which is said to be the
place where Buddhism was born in Sri Lanka. The story (briefly) goes that the
king was hunting on the hill and a monk called Mahinda stopped him from killing
a deer and instead converted him to Buddhism. You have to climb 1,843 steps to
get to the top of Mihintale. We organised to have a guide show us around as he
could provide us with a little more insight. There were two main dagobas
(similar to pagodas) , one which contains the forehead of Buddha. We had to
take off our shoes at the top as a sign of respect but we also had to climb the
Mihintale mountain! Doing this barefoot made me a little nervous as it had
rained that morning! There weren’t really steps leading up just a sort of
bannister with very small stone indents on an otherwise very smooth rock! It
was very busy as the following day was Independence day so every now and again
I had to move away from the banister and hope that my feet were grippy enough
to hold me on the rock! We were both rather surprised at how grippy our feet
were as we probably would have slipped everywhere if we’d worn shoes. The view
from the top was beautiful.
At the end of the tour we were debating how much to give our
guide, there aren’t really set prices in Sri Lanka you sort of pay what you
think something is worth- which is really difficult when you don’t have a grasp
of the value of the currency! We were planning of giving him Rs1000 but due to
lack of change we ended up giving him Rs2000. This literally must have made his
day as we later read in our guide book that people usually pay around Rs500. He
did seem rather happy when we gave it to him.
Later that day we went for a wander around Anuradhapura with us both deciding to bite
the bullet and wear our new un-walked in shoes. I got two small blisters from
my new sandals but Ed was having an absolute mare with his new flip flops. They
were way too big for his feet so he ended up doing a kind of penguin shuffle
around town which made him look like he had a gammy leg! He didn’t really see
the funny side but I thought it was hilarious! We walked/shuffled to the
supermarket and got some drinks and samosas. Heading back to the hotel we were
getting slightly concerned about the large amount of dogs taking over the road
side! It’s crazy they are literally everywhere! I’m generally a dog person but
these ones just sit around furless, licking their wounds! Ewwwww. The monkeys however are great fun, they’re so
sneaky. We saw ones in Mihintale which had stolen an ice lolly and a whole loaf
of bread!
N
Nilaveli 04.02
Now this part of the tour didn’t exactly go to plan.
Nilaveli is on the north east coast next to a city called Trincomalee. Trinco
was closed for tourists and considered dangerous for many Sinhalese people
during the war. Now three years after the war in Sri Lanka the area is
beginning to open up and letting tourists come back in. Nilaveli is a beach
resort which in the Lonely Planet guide is considered to be one of the best
beaches in Sri Lanka. What didn’t help first was the weather, as we got closer
and closer the clouds got greyer and greyer eventually leading to a
monsoon-esque downpour which never really subsided! Trincomalee and Nilaveli
were both hugely affected during the tsunami in 2004 and the war. It has a
large Tamil population. There is a large amount of poverty in Sri Lanka, more
than I naively thought but I’d say that Trinco is the poorest part I’ve seen so
far. I guess only three years after the war we couldn’t really expect it to be
any other way however there was a strange vibe in Nilaveli. We checked into our
‘Sea View’ Hotel (the H was crooked on the sign), the manager was friendly but
the rest of the staff were very serious and seemed really hostile towards us.
Despite the rain we went for a walk along the beach, the land is really flat so
it’s pretty terrifying to imagine how far the tsunami wave must have travelled.
As it was Independence Day there were lots of Sri Lankans braving the rough
waves and seemingly having a good time. Walking down the beach it wasn’t quite
the ‘golden sands’ picture which had been painted as there was lots of rubbish
and a lot of the trees looked like they had been burnt! Not quite paradise…..
We spent the rest of the day inside playing games and Ed had
a nap using his t-shirt as a cover because for some reason the hotel didn’t
provide bed sheets. We decided to cut our trip to Nilaveli short and left in
the morning to go on an elephant safari back in the cultural triangle!
N
Trincomalee, Giritale and Polonnaruwa 05.02-06.02
We woke up early to find that it was still pouring with
rain. We went down to have breakfast before leaving and even that was a
failure! The area around Nilaveli is famous for its onions apparently so they
decided to put about 3 each into our omelettes. We didn’t want to be rude as
the chef was talking to us throughout breakfast so we ate them up and said they
were delicious but the aftertaste stayed for the rest of the morning! On our
way back to the cultural triangle, we decided to stop off in Trinco to see a
famous Hindu temple above the old colonial fort which overlooks the whole
coastline. The Tamils that live in the north east of the country are Hindu as opposed
to the Sinhalese who are Buddhist so it was really interesting to see. It made us realise how little we knew about
Hinduism. The colonial fort still serves as a military base for the Sri Lankan
Army and there were lots of signs throughout the city displaying ‘evacuation
route’ or ‘no guns allowed’ which served as a reminder for how recently the war
actually ended and how much the city was affected.
We then drove back to a town in the cultural triangle called
Habarana to have lunch. Chaminda took us to a restaurant that was definitely a
favourite for drivers judging from the foreign clientele. There were a lot of
westerners! It was quite strange coming from Nilaveli and Trinco where we had
seen absolutely no westerners and felt a bit uneasy. Although there were a lot
of foreigners, we’ve found so far in Sri Lanka that we’ve come across hardly
any backpackers like us but maybe this will change when we get down to the
south and the beaches. After lunch we were picked up by our elephant safari
driver and taken to Hurulu Eco Park. It was sooo much fun! We saw loads of
elephants and other wildlife and the park itself was beautiful. I struggled
somewhat with balancing while standing in the safari Jeep while expert ranger Nina
seemed to be perfectly fine and kept telling me to take it in my knees. She was
a pro. At one point, an elephant came within about 3 metres of the Jeep which
was pretty scary! The driver had to keep the engine on in case it charged,
thankfully it didn’t and we managed to get some great pictures. What’s more,
when Chaminda picked us up and we were making our way back to the hotel, we
drove past a huge elephant just standing on the side of the road snacking on
leaves!
After staying the night in a guesthouse in the nearby town
of Giritale, we planned to visit the ancient city of Polonnaruwa. For the first
and definitely not the last time, we both woke up with dodgy stomachs and felt
a bit shaky over breakfast. With the help of both western medicine from home
and Chaminda’s Ayurvedic potion that he bought us, we felt well enough to visit
Polonnaruwa, the ancient capital city that succeeded Anuradhapura around 800
years ago. Our guide explained how much of the city was influenced by other
cultures and societies that were trading with it at the time, especially the
Chinese. The sheer scale of the city and the amount of palaces, monasteries and
temples in ruins would have made Polonnaruwa a very grand place in its heyday.
The crowning glory of the site was the rock face with 4 huge statues of Buddha
carved into it. They were all done by hand and were incredibly detailed. As we
were just leaving, the sky opened and there was an almighty downpour. Back at
the hotel we had our first taste of Sri Lankan beer: Lion Lager. Not bad. We’ve decided (because we’re incredibly cool)
to rate all the foreign beers we try over the next 7 months. This one got a 6.7
after careful consideration!
E
Village Experience Day 07.02
Since we had left Nilaveli 2 nights earlier than expected,
we had a day with nothing planned. Chaminda suggested a village experience day,
and what an experience it was! We knew from the outset that it would be one of
those very touristy affairs, but we chose to embrace it and coincidentally it
has always been one of our lifelong aims to ride on a bullock cart wearing hats
fashioned from lily pads. The first part of the ‘experience’ was a paddle boat
ride on a lake. The lake was gorgeous- full of lily pads and beautiful purple
flowers and from it you could see the silhouette of Sigiriya, our destination
for the next day. Our guide, who was definitely about 13 and should have been
at school, tried to point out the local wildlife. His English was pretty
limited though so everything was ‘This is a…’ and to be honest his knowledge
was also pretty limited as he could only identify about 3 birds, although he
pointed them out every time he spotted one. By the tenth time we were pretty
sure we had learnt which bird the cormorant was! The lake was really fun though
because while our guide was pointing out birds, the other boatman made hats for
us out of the lily pads from the water. Nina’s lady one had a purple flower on
it, while mine had some sort of manly flower stem. Nina said that I looked like
Robin Hood while I told her she looked like a drum major, although she misheard
and thought I said John Major which made her really confused. We then drank
some tea out of a coconut from a woman in a farmers hut. When we had finished,
we said thank you and goodbye but our guide said that we should give the woman
a tip. It became clear that, even though we had paid a one-off fee at the
beginning, we would have to give a tip to everybody that would enhance our
‘experience’. This was quite a few people! Although in total we would only pay
about £3 in tips, we couldn’t help feeling that we had been somewhat duped and
it was the principle that annoyed us. It also annoyed us that our boatman
thought he deserved a tip even though on the way back he decided to take a
shortcut through the weeds where we got so stuck that he had to get out and
push the boat for ten minutes! We gave him Rs50 anyway to avoid getting in an
argument, being the ultra-unconfrontational people that we are. We did,
however, have a really nice homemade lunch of rice and curry while overlooking
a river that was home to kingfishers and terrapins. Finally we made our way
back on a bullock cart! All in all, the day was pretty funny, we got some great
pictures and some valuable experience in the art of tipping.
E
Sigiriya, Dambulla and our Ayurvedic Massage! 08.02-10.02
We woke up very early on Friday as we had a lot planned for
the day. We made our way to Sigiriya, a gigantic rock fortress surrounded by
forest. Around 400AD the King had two
sons, the elder from a concubine and the younger from the Queen. When he
decided that the younger son should succeed him, the elder son was so angry
that he killed the king, ascended to the throne himself and constructed a
palace on top of the Sigiriya rock. We
first walked around the palace grounds at the bottom of the rock. There were
two moats, one that still contained crocodiles, and various swimming pools the
king had constructed for his 500 concubines! We then began our ascent of the
rock which got pretty hot and sweaty. On the way there were ancient rock
paintings of the concubines that were still in amazing condition. About ¾ of
the way up we reached the Lion’s paws, which had a staircase in between them
that originally would have led through the lion’s mouth to the top of the rock.
By the size of the paws you can imagine how incredible it must have looked. At
the peak itself there were the ruins of the palace and a fantastic view. It was
amazing!
In desperate need of a shower, we made our way to our new
hotel to find that from our room had a perfect view of the rock. In the
afternoon we went to visit the Dambulla Cave Temples. We were really impressed
by the Dambulla temples, as there were some immaculate statues of Buddha inside
these huge caves where all the walls and ceilings had been painted too. Another
highlight was seeing a huge family of westerners, when asked to remove their
shoes, replace them with those blue overshoes that you wear at swimming pools
or when decorating. We got back to the hotel to find a HUGE wasp in our room,
it must have been around 1.5 inches long. I managed to trap it in a bin while
Nina sat under the mosquito net barking her orders. Nina also managed to buy a
really nice sarong with elephants on it that she loves, and we bought our first
souvenir: a batik picture of an elephant!
After deciding that we would only buy one souvenir per
country, the next day we bought our second souvenir. We went to a have a look
around a wood carving shop. The shopkeeper gave us a little tour of his
workshop and a bit of information about all the woods he uses and how he carves
them. Surprisingly, mahogany is the cheapest wood in Sri Lanka. When looking
around we decided to buy a traditional Sri Lankan mask to go with the Korean
one we already have. It’s a blue peacock mask and all the paint was obtained
naturally from different trees. We then went for an Ayurvedic massage! Ayurveda
is a traditional Sri Lankan system of medicine and the massage uses lots of
different oils and remedies. We both got a full body massage, then Nina got a
facial while I had some sort of strange thing where oil was continuously
dripped onto my forehead. Pretty good! The only downside being by the end my
hair was ridiculously oily and Nina said I looked a bit like Alan Sugar.
The next day Chaminda dropped us off in Kandy and we said
goodbye and exchanged numbers and emails. We felt very lucky as he was really
laid back, funny and we got on really well with him. He said if we come back to
Sri Lanka we can stay with him and his family in his village!
E
Brilliant pictures and very funny comments. I particularly liked Nina being described as John Major (or so she thought). How are you going to manage though without a chauffeur for the next 7 months?
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