Sigiriya and Village Walk

The ancient water gardens.

Part of the climb up.

One of the feet of the mountain.

Up...

and up.

The pool at the top and...

part of the remnants of the palace.

The feet from above and at ground level.

Sigiriya monolith after coming down.

A home in the village.

The village drinking well.

The tea and convenience store shop.

This is the way we wash our clothes.

Making our 'crepe'.

The monitor lizard.

Kulanda and her mom and my meal.

Tuesday, February 6^th.

We left at 7:45 and drove to the short distance to the World Heritage Site of Sigiriya. This is a massive palace complex built in the 5^th century by the king of the country. He built his palace on the top of a large rock monolith. Surrounding it he built gardens and water pools for his court to bathe in. The bricks were made from clay and carried up the mountain to construct the palace and all of its supporting buildings. Today only the foundations and first few rows of bricks of the buildings still exist, but you can clearly see how massive this complex was, and how people who lived up here could think of themselves as so much more superior to the people who lived below. 

Sam gave us a bit of the history and then we began the 1300 step climb to the summit. Unfortunately, the summit was in-cased in cloud as we approached. The climb was not too difficult because there were quite a few tourists going up and the speed was pretty slow, plus we stopped a few times for more history. Most of the climb was up a metal staircase that has been attached to the rock face. About half way up there is a spiral staircase that goes straight up to a cave area where there are ancient paintings of some of the kings 500 wives. There were signs everywhere not to take photos and Sam told us that photography was forbidden, but John forgot and promptly got busted. The guard was really angry with him and asked whether he was in a group and who his guide was. Then he made John sit in the corner until we could find Sam. When Sam came up there was a lot of back and forth between them and the guard gave John a lecture about being a responsible tourist. He said that the fine was up to 50 000 dollars or rupees (we weren’t sure which) and two weeks in prison! But after the lecture and John contritely saying sorry repeatedly, and the guard deleting the offending photo, he was told he could go. Sam said that the agreement was that John had to pay 3000 rupees (about $20) to another guard so that he didn’t have to go to the police station to make report. Good old John, he had forgotten to bring his wallet, so I gave him the money for his fine/bribe. Never a dull moment. The ironic thing is that when we got back to van later, Sam gave us our entrance ticket and on the back was a picture of exactly what John took a picture of. Plus, there were people there selling postcards of it. It was a picture of two topless queens picking flowers.

We continued the climb and marvelled at the views and the remnants of what must have been a spectacular palace. There was even a large pool at the top. Thankfully the clouds had lifted, and we had good views from the top. Then we climbed back down to the van. On the way out we could see the rock monolith clearly.
The next stop was a walking tour through Gamagedara village with a local young lad. This is a way that the village can get some of the tourist money to come to them. We walked along a couple of lush green roads, past a few homes, rice fields and finally wound up at a little shop where Sam bought us all a cup of tea and they gave us a couple of small pieces of sugar/fudge. We finished the walk through the village and then drove to a local restaurant which served traditional Sri Lankan food. We watched a lady make up a very thin crepe type snack and two chefs showed us how to make dahl and then we had a good meal with a variety of dishes that we ate off a banana leaf in a little wicker plate.
We spent the last half of the afternoon back at the hotel and made good use of the pool. It was nice to relax and enjoy the sun and water. A metre-long monitor lizard came over to the pool, walked right past me and slithered into a drainage hole. Very cool.
For dinner Sam took us to another small family run restaurant that served traditional food, which was very good, and we were served by their 10-year old daughter Uranda, who was very confident and cute. During dinner I talked to Sam and asked if he had ever had a tourist take a photo like that before and he said no. Apparently the guard wanted to take John to the police (or was supposed to arrest John) but Sam told them he couldn’t do that because he was a tourist on a tour. He told the guard to arrest him instead. The guard was upset because John didn’t have his passport with him so he had to write out a report with Sam’s tour guide information instead and he would send that to the local police. He said that after he dropped us off in the afternoon, he had to go to the police station and make a report. Luckily his family knows someone higher up who phoned the police and smoothed it over. Thorough it all, Sam was very calm and didn’t get mad at John or lose his temper with the guard. Sam who is 41, also told us why he is not married. He was going out for 6 or 7 years with a woman and they got very serious. But his parents and her parents went to an astrologist who made up charts and predictions for their future and declared that it was not a good match. Sadly they were not allowed to see each other any more and now she lives in Australia and Sam is trying to find a wife.