So yesterday was a big adventure, with my father leaning at an accelerated pace how to drive a tuk tuk on the unforgiving streets of Sri Lanka. Today we left the driving in the capable hands of a taxi driver who took us to the next part of our trip, Sigiriya. This isolated village site next to a fantastic rock with a lionhead shaped peak looking out over the countryside. That conquest is for tomorrow though.
The journey to Sigiriya was simple enough. The driver every now and then slowed down to point out rice paddy fields or other points of interest, such as the airport of Anuradhapura that saw heavy fighting during the civil war that only ended five years ago. It was brutal conflict but I do not have enough space and time to go into any detail, so it might feature itself in a future post. The highlight of our journey was a quick stop at the side of the road near a bridge. Nothing out of the ordinary you would think, until an elephant appeared out of now where and walked past our parked van. It turned out that we were in fact at a place where elephants were bathed, and indeed we saw a 35 year old male called Khandala being scrubbed clean in the river. I declined the invitation to help by my brother and mother were more easily pulled into it. I found myself envying the elephant as he did nothing but sit in the water and have his back scratched. All the time out taxi driver told us more about the elephant. I had an interesting story about an elephant in Manchester which I told in return, but I’m unsure of how much got through to him.
Our next stop was at a safari park where we were offered drinks and sold the idea of going on safari, to which we relented and decided to do tomorrow. Always take the chance to see elephants in the wild. The drinks were fine too but it was of course a ploy to separate us from more money. Thankfully the park was only 20 minutes away from our hotel so it was easier to swallow than it normally would have been. The next adventure was trying to locate our hotel which was doing a very good job of not making itself known. We finally found it and it definitely lives up to it’s name of

Back of Beyond

. It is remote to say the least and if it weren’t for the data I bought yesterday we might have been cut off from the world, although that might have been for the best. It is a fantastic location however and comes fully recommended.
Since we had spent most of the day driving and resting we only visited a couple of things in the afternoon. We climbed the peak of Pidurangala, which isn’t far from the Sigiriya peak. En route was a large resting Buddha that had a fantastic view over the surrounding countryside and was comparable to the summit, or however far we reached before our climbing abilities failed us. I didn’t realise how out of shape I was until I struggled to reach was came more easily a few years ago. Doesn’t that make me sound like and old man!
The return journey took us through the ruins of the old Pidurangala temple that had been built in the 5th century AD. It was of course not as spectacular as the monster sites we saw in Anuradhapura but it was still beautiful in it’s own way, especially in how it was reclaimed by the surrounding forest. It made me want to re watch the jungle book again. We called it a day after that because we were all exhausted.
Tomorrow is going to be a fun day. We are getting up at an ungodly hour to see a museum and fort at Sigiriya in the morning, and then in the afternoon a three hour safari trip so see elephants in the nearby nature reserve. In a word, Sri Lanka is awesome. So until tomorrow.