Early start. Morning trip to Polonnaruwa – really bumpy ride – second oldest capital (11th/12th century).
[Polonnaruwa] ruins in slightly better repair than Anuradhapura – several temples to see plus more dagobas (stupas).
Also Gal Vihara – Buddha images.
Back to Sigiriya Village for mediocre lunch then on optional tour to Dambulla.
Climb up to cave temples – wonderful old (15th century?) Cave paintings and Buddha images – well worth the trip. My feet were attacked by killer ants as we left.
Yes, goodness knows where those biter ants came from, but as I came out of the cave temples entrance all of a sudden my feet were covered with ants – it felt like hundreds of needles being pressed into my feet. I think I made a bestial roar and started running around and shaking my feet to try to remove the ants. For some reason, this seemed to amuse the local tourists no end. My feet went red briefly and then returned to normal within just a few minutes, as if nothing had happened.
Back to Sigiriya [Village Hotel] for mediocre dinner and early-ish night.
Perceptive readers might have noticed that I was not overly impressed by that hotel, especially in the matter of the grub. Our other beef with the hotel was the paper-thinness of the walls. Although we were in “cottages”, the rooms were semi-detached halves of cottages.
Indeed, the thing that probably put us off group touring for good after this holiday was the vocal double-entendres at breakfast the next morning from our nosy neighbours, who left us and the rest of the group in no doubt that you could hear anything and everything from the next room.
We were one of only two younger couples in that Sri Lanka group (there was also only a handful of younger travelers when we toured China in 1993). We decided after this Sri Lanka trip that we didn’t want to be the unwitting entertainment for frustrated older couples any more.
Part One of our two-part photo album for this Sri lanka trip can be viewed through the flickr link below there are 69 photos therein:
Real gluttons for photo punishment can see raw scans of all 430 photos we took unedited and unlabelled here:
