Sri Lanka: Part 1

In case you didn’t read the last post, all you need to know was that the last few weeks of packing the house and saying goodbye to everyone were chaotic and stressful, with a lot of emotions, anxiety and sleepless nights. We hadn’t really had a break since our birthdays in July, so when we finally made it out the door on the morning of 16 October, we could think about the trip that we were embarking on, and about how the upcoming week through Sri Lanka was a non-stop road trip to see every sight on the small island in only 5 days. With three to four hours of driving a day, a new hotel every night, and more sights than we thought we could possibly fit in, this was far from the relaxing holiday that we would have liked at this point. There was no changing things now, so we continued to the airport, ready to start this adventure.

The flights went by without any issues, and the layover in the Singapore Airlines lounge was maybe the best we have ever had. We caught up on some of the lost sleep on both the flights, and finally arrived in Sri Lanka at midnight. Our hotel was right across the street from the airport, and we were relieved not to have to continue travelling after we had landed. We were exhausted and collapsed into bed as soon as we got there.

Day 1:

Even with the sleep deficit from the last few days, we were up at about 6 am the next morning, still running on the Sydney time zone. We had some nice, cheap breakfast and coffee in the hotel restaurant, where we were the only people eating for the first half of our meal. It was a nice slow morning, but eventually checked out of our room and met our driver and tour guide, Shan, out front of the hotel. Shan was very nice, the car was comfortable, the air conditioning felt great, and all our bags fit in the back. There’s nothing more we could have asked for.

The first destination we had planned for the trip was the ancient city of Polonnaruwa and a couple of Buddhist temples nearby. Polonnaruwa is a small town that was an ancient capital of the Sri Lankan kingdom, and it was about a three hour drive from Negombo, where the airport is located. Getting out of the city was everything you expect from an Asian country, tuk tuks, motorbikes, cars and trucks all weaving between each other and a constant barrage of horns to keep us awake. We were happy to have Shan driving, who is used to these roads, and we quickly made it out of the city and onto the highway.

We started talking to Shan a bit more about what we wanted to do over the next few days, as we had really left him in the dark up to this point, and our itinerary for the first day was a couple of Buddhist sites and temples. Well, it turned out we arrived on a Buddhist full moon holiday, which meant that the temples we wanted to visit would be packed with locals praying and making offerings, and it would be better to visit these the next day. This highlighted the lack of research we had done on the trip, and when he suggested an elephant safari for this first day, we agreed without hesitation.

The elephant safari was through Minneriya National Park, which is a large national park right next to Polonnaruwa where elephants and other animals roam wild. Shan’s suggestion for the tour was his safari guide mate, who runs a bit more of a budget tour compared to some of the bigger companies that are well advertised. But all the tours drive the same dirt roads through the same national park, so we were happy to save a bit of money with the budget tour here. After driving through a bit of the national park on the highway and seeing our first elephant on the side of the road, we pulled into a house with an old jeep parked in the driveway. This was the driver’s house, and we hopped into the back of this open top jeep and set out back up the highway to the park entrance.

Once we made it into the park and paid the entrance fee, we stood up in the back of the jeep to look for elephants. This didn’t take too long, and we saw our first group of six to eight elephants grazing in the long grass that filled the park. The grass was nearly as tall as the smaller elephants, and there were just enough trees in the park so we couldn’t get any great pictures of this group, so we moved on after about five minutes. It didn’t take long for us to come up to another group of about fifteen elephants. There were a couple of babies hiding behind their mothers, but there was also one elephant walking right along the road, and we got some great photos here. We watched this group for another ten minutes, and we couldn’t believe how good this tour was. Probably less than a quarter of the drive through the park and we had already seen over twenty elephants. It turned out that it was a great start to the tour, because the rest of the first half of the tour went past without any more elephants.

Elephants in Minneriya National Park

We took a quick break at the midpoint to walk up a hill and take in the vastness of the national park. There may have been some villages below the canopy, but from our point of view, it looked like endless, unbroken jungle extending out in every direction.

Selfie at the midpoint lookout

When we got back into the jeep to continue the tour, it didn’t take too long to find another smaller group of elephants with another two babies once again hidden behind their mothers so we couldn’t get any good photos. For the rest of the tour, we were finding these small groups of two to four elephants, most of them with babies, and it was only the last groups where we were close enough to the baby to take a good photo. It was still hiding behind it’s mum and it was very well hidden under the tall grass, but we were patient and eventually got a glimpse of it through a break in the grass. The photos still weren’t great, but they were better than any of the others we had managed on this trip.

Baby elephant

We exited the park after this one, but saw another small group along the side of the highway, which brought the total number of elephants on this safari to fifty. For something we hadn’t planned and had no idea about, this turned out to be an incredible tour and experience.

The drive out here and the elephant tour took us to about 2 pm in the afternoon, and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast at about 7 am. We were starving, and Shan had a really nice Sri Lankan family restaurant planned for lunch. When we arrived, the lady running the restaurant showed us around, and explained what each of the different dishes was. They were all set out in clay pots buffet style, and there was another lady making fresh coconut roti in a brick oven. As often happens at a buffet, we piled our plates high with a little bit of everything, and stuffed ourselves with great authentic Sri Lankan curries, rice, bread and other dishes. I went back for seconds, and still found a bit of room to try some of the desserts they had set out as well. It was all so delicious that we ate so much that we wouldn’t need dinner, and I think it all cost about $25 AUD total.

Finally, after lunch, we were on our way to the ancient city of Polonnaruwa. This place is a UNESCO world heritage site, and is a couple of different ancient sites spread around the town. The guides online had said to spend a full day here, but it was coming up on 4pm and we would have two to three hours before it was dark. But with Shan driving us around between the different sites, this was all we needed. We started at the ancient palace, where the kings had lived. It was built over 1,000 years ago, when this was the capital of Sri Lanka, and had been burnt down around the 1300’s by Hindus invading the island and trying to kill off the Sri Lankan culture and Buddhist religion. Despite being over 1,000 years old, the palace and other sites were built using clay bricks and mortar, similar to how buildings are still built today. The bricks were worn and damaged from the fire, but without looking it up, I would have believed this was all built within the last two hundred years.

The next stop on the tour of the city was a quick drive down the road and consisted of a series of ancient temples. Apparently, each new king needed to build their own temple, and this series of temples from different kings were all built right next to one another. These temples were mostly flat open ruins with a couple of decorative pillars. Some had pictures carved into the stone, and others had words and scriptures in Sanskrit, Sinhala and Tamil. It was all incredibly well preserved, and it was golden hour at this point, so we took some really nice photos throughout the site. We continued exploring the different temples and the swimming pool, where we witnessed a monkey fight. Luckily, these monkeys were less aggressive than ones we have previously seen (Bali), and they were fighting amongst themselves without ever making any moves toward a person.

Buddha Statues at Polonnaruwa temples

The last sight of the day was a giant stupa, and a rock wall that had three massive buddha statues carved into it. Both of these sites were packed with local people and were actively being used for worship services related to the full moon holiday. We observed from a distance, but didn’t stay too long since the sun was going down and we didn’t want to fully interrupt their service.

Polonnaruwa Stupa

We took a few photos, then went back to check into our accommodation for the night. This was the cheapest place we are staying in the whole trip, and although the room was nice enough, there was not dinner or breakfast nearby. Luckily, we didn’t need it, and we just went straight to sleep at about 7:30 pm.

Day 2:

The next day, we were well rested and somewhat caught up on sleep from the packing and travel the few days before. The plan for this day was to visit all the temples and sights that we had skipped the day before due to the Buddhist holiday, and that would take us through to Kandy, which was the final capital of Sri Lanka before colonial rule.

The first stop of the day was Sigiriya rock, also known as Lion rock, which is this two to three hundred meter tall rock sticking straight up out of the jungle, and the ancient people had managed to build a city around and on top of this rock. Shan had to stay with the car, and left us to climb the rock alone. It was still early in the morning, so it was quiet, and it wasn’t too hot outside yet. There were a lot of narrow staircases bolted into the side of the cliffs, but it was less dodgy than the ancient bamboo staircases would have been, so we cruised up and made it to the top quickly.

Sigiriya Rock

The entire top of the rock had been developed into an ancient city, with brick walls and structures right up to the edge of the cliffs, different tiers and places for farming and a swimming pool. We took some great photos, and enjoyed the views before starting the trek back down the staircases. We had gone up the hill early enough that there weren’t many people coming back down at us, but on the way back down, it was a bit of a fight through the crowds coming up on these narrow staircases that barely had enough room to fit past the oncoming traffic. There were a couple more sites to stop at on the way down, but we made it through quickly and met up with Shan again at the bottom. We had a busy day ahead of us and didn’t waste any time heading off for the next temple.

Cliffs along the climb up Sigiriya Rock

The next site was Dambulla Cave Temple. This was about thirty minutes down the road from Sigiriya, and it was a site that Millie and I didn’t think was a priority if something needed to be skipped. It was well recommended online, but with so many temples, this one would be the casualty if we were short on time. But we had an early start and made it through Sigiriya quickly, so nothing needed skipping. We parked in a dirt lot across the road and had to climb a few stairs to get up to the entrance of the temple. Shan said there was something like 350 steps up to the temple, but it was nothing compared to Sigiriya rock earlier in the morning. We were cruising up, and took a few breaks to make sure we didn’t lose Shan. When we made it to the entrance, we had to remove our shoes before entering the temple, and I also had to put on a sari because my shorts were a bit too short. We got all of this sorted, and made it into the temple, which is a series of caves with buddha statues carved out of the rock inside, and the walls and ceilings painted with Buddhas and other Buddhist symbols. We entered the first cave without too much expectation, and it was a small, hot, stuffy cave with a six meter long lying down buddha statue and some paintings on the ceiling, and it was really incredible. This was the smallest of the five caves, and we were already glad that we hadn’t skipped this. The caves got progressively larger as we went through, and in total there were hundreds of buddha statues along with a few kings and bodhisattvas, and there was something like five thousand square meters of walls and ceilings that were entirely painted. It was our favourite temple of the trip, and one of the highlights of Sri Lanka.

Dambulla Cave Temple statues

We didn’t take many photos here, just spent the time taking in all of the effort put in over hundreds of years to build this place. But eventually we exited, where I returned the borrowed sari, and we were given our shoes back. There weren’t any more temples to visit between Dambulla and Kandy, but it was afternoon at this point, we were thirsty from the walking and climbing, and we hadn’t had breakfast or dinner the night before and we were absolutely starving. Shan had an Indian restaurant in mind for lunch, but this was just outside Kandy and over an hour drive away still. So, we stopped just outside of Dambulla at a little shack where a local family was selling coconuts. We had a coconut each, which replenished the electrolytes, but they were not fully ripe and there wasn’t much meat inside to cut the edge off our growing hunger.

We couldn’t make it to the Indian restaurant quick enough, and we ended up ordering an assortment of starters, naan, papadums, and curries – far too much food. But we apparently needed it because there was none left when we finished up and continued the drive through to Kandy.

In Kandy, we went straight for the hotel to check in and take a minute to digest all of the Indian food, but there was still another temple to visit before the day was over. So, somewhat refreshed and wearing proper pants this time, we went back out to drive down to central Kandy and the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. This is the most sacred Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka, and, as its name suggests, it houses the Sacred Tooth Relic, which is a tooth from Gautama Buddha (The original buddha). So, we paid another entry fee, Millie had to put on a sari this time because the split in her denim skirt was too high, we took off our shoes again, and we entered the temple. This temple has a whole riverfront and courtyard area, then inside the temple, the ground floor had an open courtyard with a shrine separate to the Sacred Tooth shrine. The locals were still celebrating, although we aren’t sure what, but they were decorating this shrine with flower garlands, and patterns of colourful flowers on the ground around the full perimeter of the shrine. There were some beautiful decorations and a rare site to see, as Shan had never seen this either and he is from Kandy.

Decorations at the Shrine in Kandy Temple

We stayed to take a few photos before we moved on to head upstairs and through to the Sacred Tooth Relic shrine. When we were exiting the courtyard into the main part of the temple, we bought some lotus flowers to support the locals and so we could make an offering at this most sacred Buddhist site. We went up the stairs holding our flowers and entered the room with the Sacred Tooth Relic shrine. The shrine was ornate with elephant tusks, gold plated carvings, and buddhist paintings, but the tooth is not out on display. It is in a box behind the shrine. Shan went up to the shrine first, showing us how to make the offering. Then Millie went next, closing her eyes, making a prayer or a wish, and placed her flowers at the shrine, and finally I did the same. We can’t tell anyone what these wishes were, or that will void the whole thing (like a birthday wish), but we both hope it works. This temple was something a bit different from the ancient sites that we had visited earlier and the day before, but it was still another Buddhist temple, and that we were templed out.

We left the temple, again returning the sari and collecting our shoes, then we parted ways with Shan. Since we had already dropped all of our stuff in the hotel, Shan left us to walk around central Kandy a bit and get some dinner before we would go back up the hill to our hotel for the night. Well, after walking along the loud busy streets of Kandy for two blocks, we decided the crowds and the noise from the horns, buses and everything else were too overwhelming. We also weren’t hungry yet after our large lunch and the sun was getting low, so it was the perfect chance to just take a nice sunset walk along the lake, and that would take us right back up to our hotel.

Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic across Kandy Lake

The path happened to be right on the main road in/out of Kandy and it was rush hour, so we didn’t escape the noise of Kandy, but the views over the lake were magical. We eventually made it back to our hotel right as it was getting dark, and we went to decompress in the quiet of our room for a while. Despite the large lunch, we did eat dinner, and this hotel was the nicest one we stayed at in Sri Lanka, so the food was great, and the views from the rooftop were just what we needed to relax after a long day.