Just another day knocking off UNESCO World Heritage Sites..... Sigh.
I'm kidding. We are taking nothing for granted. Sri Lanka has 8 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, which is a very important designation for significant man made or natural wonders of the world. One of the most important point of achieving the designation, for outside onlookers, is that the host country is responsible for maintaining and securing the designated site so that it is there for generations to come. For locals, a UNESCO designation can mean a huge influx in tourism dollars. In Sri Lanka, we have...
- the ancient city of Sigiriya (1982)
- the Golden Temple of Dambulla (1991)
- the old town of Galle and its fortifications (1988)
- the sacred city of Anuradhapura (1982)
- the sacred city of Kandy (1988)
- Sinharaja Forest Reserve (1988)
- Central Highlands of Sri Lanka (2010)
We have the awesome opportunity of seeing a good chunk of those eight sites. On the schedule today (that should have been tomorrow! More on that later) were Sigiriya and Dambulla.
We'd arranged with the driver that picked us up at the train station to take us for the day. So who shows up this morning? His brother, Raja. You know, the kind of brother with different last names. We weren't initially happy with the bait and switch - we try and pick personalities that will suit our group if we're doing a day trip. I went outside and had a chat with him, checked his van out and had a look at his insurance (our hotel owner gave me that tip). He seemed good and his English was decent.
We left Kandy at about 8:15, and slowly made our way out of the city. The drive was pretty nice: there was plenty to look at, including some stunning countryside views. Raja was a nice source of knowledge and I could tell he'd done this "tour" quite a lot.
Everyone is on the take in the tourism industry in Sri Lanka. Now, that could resemble the Vietnam way where there is a list price for something and people hustle for the commission of selling it to you. There's also the other way - encouraging you to go to a certain restaurant/hotel/shop that they would have a prearranged commission deal with. You can either let this bother you, or you can roll with it. On average, it bothers us. Usually because the places they try and take you are second rate, or have expensive crappy food or whatever. So far on the trip, we have avoided this "tout" culture by taking short, private transportation trips. Sri Lanka might be different....
Sigiriya is an incredible piece of engineering and imagination. I have to start out by showing an aerial view I
When we arrived at the gate, Raja gave us the low down - we would be asked by many guides if we wanted to hire them. He then opened the window, engaged one guy and asked us in front of him in slow, loud English "would you like to hire a guide?" "No thanks" "O. K.", then he told the guy that sorry, he tried to sell us on using a guide but that we were not interested. That was nice.
It was very hot outside - the sun was pounding down. We made our way from shady spot to shady spot, remembering the strategy that Siya used in Angkor.
One of the impressive things you see while walking up the many steps to get up to the top of the ancient Fort are very old frescoes painted on the walls.
When we got halfway up, we reached a plateau where there were two huge lion paws that acted as sentries guarding the the main stairway.
The top was windy, but really hot in the sun. There was very little shade. The view was quite spectacular - three hundred sixty degrees you could see twenty or more kilometers in the distance. On the one hand, it would have been a pretty surreal place for the King and his family to live, on the other hand it really would have been a pain in the ass to come and go, not to mention how hard it would be to supply the place with fresh water and food.
Most of the buildings of the palace and surrounding buildings were built out of wood (thus, long gone) but just walking around the foundation walls, avoiding falling in the many pools that seemed to have been interspersed among the buildings, I really got a sense for just how big the place was.
We sat under a tree and enjoyed the breeze for a while. That was nice.
We met Raja at the tourist parking lot after avoiding a bunch of vendors along the pathway back. Lunch was a bit of challenge - we didn't finish at Sigiriya until about 1:30, and the first place Raja took us was not acceptable. He tried another couple of local places which we nixed. I told Raja just to drive right to the city of Dambulla so we could find some other place.
We were all hungry. You know, our expectations (that we try to communicate to people) are clean, busy restaurants that locals eat at. However, for the local guide, he or she has many conflicting thoughts: they couldn't possibly want to eat at a local place?! They probably want to eat at a tourist hotel that has local food! I don't make any commission at local places I don't know!!! In general, the biggest thing we do not like is to be "forced" to eat at some tourist trap.
Eventually, we found a place at some tourist hotel (lol!) that had good food and beer(!), which I hadn't tried yet in Sri Lanka...
We weren't far from the main site to see in Dambulla: the Dambulla Cave Temple. At the base of the cave complex is a large, golden statue of Buddha that is pretty nice, though he had a small growth of hornets nest under his divine chin.
The cave temples are a series of five temples built into the side of mountain what felt like a bijillion steps up In the heat right after lunch. There were hundreds of monkeys all around the stairs, and tourists in varying degrees of proximity to acquiring rabies or some other monkey born disease while posing with the animals.
The caves were very nice, particularly the biggest one that had a full stuppa surrounded by hundreds of stone Buddhas. There were beautiful frescos all over the walls and ceilings which added to the mystique. I was really surprised at how good of shape everything was in. Although it all looked very old, I suspect there have been many repairs and replacements over the years.
Abby captured this pic of prayer flags, which reminded me of our upcoming trip to Nepal, where you often see colourful Buddhist prayer flags.
Another Abby pic - lotus flowers. Nice one!
In front of the temple area, there was a huge golden stupa, though there was no indication whose remains may have been buried there.
We headed back on the road to Kandy, making a stop for a coconut for Robin, Raja and I. At the stop was one of the many musical, red "bread" trucks that we'd seen in and around Kandy. The repetitive, loud musical tune that it plays does attract a lot of attention, but the drivers of these things must really feel like they're going nuts at the end of the day.
And there it is.....
Razic and Nasli, the elderly couple that own our hotel, invited us to dinner. "Hell yes!" we all thought to ourselves. A home cooked dinner, neither cooked by us nor in our home, was something we are all craving. I figure we've had about 320 meals at restaurants, guest houses and hotels (shout out to Abby who has cooked our few "homemade" meals in K.K., L.P. and Kyoto!) and a home cooked meal sounded fantastic.
It was. Saffron rice, curried chicken, curried potatoes, lentils, curried pineapple/tomato/date chutney, soup, chopped vegetable salad.... Wow. No beer (they are Muslim) but oh well :-). It was so nice to have been invited and we had some really nice conversations. I'm not sure if they just felt like we would be nice company (of course, right! Right?) or if it had something to do with their son trying to get an accounting job in Canada, but it was truly a nice evening.
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