Jungle Love

Sigiriya's frescoes
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By Dan

The next phase of our Sri Lankan adventure was delayed a little as we tried to depart Kandy. A wedding party was arriving at our hotel, complete with traditionally costumed dancers and musicians, much like we had seen at the dance show the prior night. Things are seriously colorful in this country: Buddhist monks in their red robes, saris in all sorts of colors, men wearing brightly patterned sarongs and totally mismatched shirts on top, etc. The traditional costumes are even more spectacular, with lots of shimmering gold, long tassels, and more bright colors. Very cool.

Kids playing chess
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Once out the door, we headed north, virtually right in the center of the island of Sri Lanka, towards the first of several significant historical sites. The roads tended to be crowded with buses, motorized rickshaws called “tuk-tuks” (just like those in Thailand), cars, bicycles, carts, and people. So, progress was fairly slow. We loved soaking up the scenery though, which was remarkably verdant. One gets the sense that it takes no effort to grow things here. Trees, vines, crops, weeds, flowers, you name it – everything looks happy, although the competition for space is tremendous. Sometimes, it seems like this is one big jungle. We love it! One also gets the sense that this is a pretty crowded place. There were lots of steep mountains that couldn’t be planted upon or lived upon, but in every other available space we saw small houses, crops, or something else useful.

Drinks with the traveling squad
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Several hours of driving brought us to the Dambulla Royal Rock Temples. A steep walk up a hill past various monkeys and hawkers brought us to a set of five caves that were carved into elaborate Buddhist temples sometime around the 1^st C. BC. Hundreds of sculptures of the Buddha in various positions were carved out of the rock, in some cases, or made in stone and inserted, in others, along with lots of paintings and decorations on the walls. After five months of Christianity and Islam, it’s fun to be seeing a new religion, and the totally different. Everywhere we look, we see more statues of the Buddha – street corners, mountain tops, restaurants, and caves. He’s omnipresent. Sadly, Dambulla hit the news a week after we were there, when the Tamil Tigers set off a bomb on a bus and killed a number of people. Let’s hope that things settle down in Sri Lanka soon.

Sigiriya Rock
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Next stop was Sigiriya, which I remembered finding very cool when I was here in 1986. A large rock outcropping rises about 200 meters high, just sort of popping out of the jungle. Did I mention that there’s a lot of jungle around here? Jojo, Papa, and Abby decided to head straight for the pool at our hotel, but Christina, Grayson, and I headed up the rock. It’s all a little unclear, but apparently a king in the late 5^th C. AD built spectacular gardens and palaces, both at the foot of the rock and at the top. It’s really hot and steamy in this part of the world, so we were all pretty sweaty after five minutes of walking, but it was a very peaceful, beautiful scene as we admired the remains of the gardens and pools at the bottom. Then, we started up a series of stairs and ramps. Part way up, there were some great frescoes painted on the walls of the cliff, depicting either celestial nymphs or the king’s concubines, depending on who you ask. They were (sort of) clothed and otherwise portrayed in a manner suitable for celestial nymphs or concubines, if you know what I mean. The colors were really vibrant, and overall the scene was pretty cool for stuff that is 1500 years old. Just past there, a wall features graffiti from 1000 years ago, where people apparently wrote in ancient Sinhalese what impression the celestial nymphs had made on them.

Sweating it out on the way up
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At the top, we admired awesome views out across the jungles – lots of them -- of central Sri Lanka, and the ruins of the king’s palace and swimming pool. Huffing, puffing, and sweating, I kept thinking how glad I was not to have had the job of lugging rocks and bricks up for months on end. Remind me not to be reincarnated as a first millennium laborer, in my next life. We all agreed, though, that it was definitely worth the effort to see Sigiriya, both from the bottom and the top.

Our hotel at Sigiriya was, naturally, parked in the middle of some thick jungle. The kids had fun watching two types of monkeys sneaking around the edges of the pool area as they splashed around. Maxi, our wonderful driver, identified them as red faced brown monkeys, and black faced yellow monkeys. Something told us that there were probably more formal names, and sure enough we later learned that we were seeing toque macaques and Hanuman langurs. We also saw a mongoose, some king-sized spiders, and various other exotic wildlife in and around the grounds. As I have said, it is really humid around here. Having grown accustomed to the warmth and dry air of Africa, which allowed us to wash clothes and often have them dry overnight, we were sort of thrown for a loop when nothing had dried after hanging in our room under a fan for 36 hours in Sigiriya. We’ll have to pick our spots for clothes-washing more carefully, in this part of our travels.

Sigiriya from the top
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Christina was able to squeeze in a massage at the Ayurvedic spa at the hotel. For those of you who know Christina, she is big on massages and jumps at the opportunity when she can afford it. This was definitely a bargain: for a little over $40, she got a 100 minute massage. The report was that the guy had “great hands” but she was a little put off by the half bottle of olive oil (yes, olive oil) that he used. Apparently, he was a little surprised that she wanted to take a shower and wash her hair at the spa before leaving. We all thought she smelled like an Italian deli for a few days thereafter.

The next day, we headed east on more narrow, winding, and crowded roads towards Polonnaruwa. (Side note: Sri Lankan names are incredibly long, and often melodious, but can be tough to pronounce – dad quickly took to abbreviations, calling Sigiriya just plain Sigi, Polonnaruwa just Polo, and the capper, Anuradhapura, as just Ana, and we joined the tradition.) Along the way, we saw more jungle, more rice and coconut plantations, more elephants, and a lot of police and military bases.

Polo was the capital of Sri Lanka from the 10^th to the 12^th C. AD, after the fall of Ana and before it started bouncing around various other places. We spent several hours sweltering in the steam-bath, looking at old palaces, old temples, and old monasteries. Surrounded by lots of greenery, with nearly nobody else around, you could really imagine the place as it was 900 years ago. The highlight of the visit was the four Buddhas in different poses carved out of a single piece of rock. It was an awesome sight to see.

Truthfully, I think we all had had enough temples and ruins for a few days, though, and nobody seemed overly disappointed when we had wrapped up our visit and started the drive back to Sigi. Sometimes, it’s nice to have the kids along because we can blame it on them when we, too, have had enough culture and are ready to cut a visit short or skip something that the guidebooks say we should see. Like Sigi, though, Polo was worth the drive and interesting to see. After more time in Asia, we may start swearing that we’re never visiting another temple or monastery, but we’re not there yet!

The plan had been to have lunch at Polo, before starting the drive to Sigi. The first place we tried, based on a good rec from Lonely Planet, was determined to be unacceptable. The second place, the government-run hotel right on the shores of the beautiful lake, seemed like a reasonable place to try. We have now learned, though, that lunches in Sri Lanka are an art form. There’s always a big buffet, with an equally big price tag on it (well, prices are pretty low here, so if you consider $8 a big price tag). If you don’t want to eat the buffet, you can order a la carte, but it takes forever. Mom and Dad tried to order soup, and we finally canceled the order after about 30 minutes of waiting. Were they making chicken soup from scratch? We’ll never know. Next time, I think we’re all going for the buffet. . . .