Sri Lanka, Sigiriya, October 31, 2017

Sigiriya hill on the right

Tuesday. Up at 5:45 AM. The room is so nice. The vista is magnificent. Two hills jut out in the distance. One of them we will climb today. The sky is not blue. It is silvery and that is good for our two hour walk up the "Lion" Mountain, Sigiriya. It was the site, in the year 400, of the king's palace. Now, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Half way up the 700 feet ascent, there is a massive entryway in the image of a lion's paws. As we walked to the van we looked up at the peaked roof of one building. At the tippy top point there was a peacock serenading us. A few feet later at the reception building a peacock paced back and forth on the roof ridge.

The drive this morning started on an unpaved one lane red earth road. Quite bouncy. Very bouncy. Dogs sprawled on the road. Some moved out of the way slowly. Others stayed put, gave us a glance and we drove around them or honked them into action. Lots of them are unowned, just wild. There are soldiers in uniform, rifles over shoulders, jogging, walking casually toward the base. Everything remains green. The color scheme is beautiful: red, green, brown, and blue when the sky is clear. School children walk calmly, in uniforms, freshly combed hair or pig tails, backpacks, toward school through the morning chaos. Women and men starting work. Little buildings, mostly open air.

Thirty mins later ....

We have entered the Siguriya park. There are remnants of formal gardens. We walk through them en route to the ascent. The paths, long and straight, are red earth. The grass is naturally green. Lots of stray men offer their service as guides.

90 Minutes later ....

We have walked the steps to the top of Sigiriya. I hear a guide say, "1352 steps". That is different from the literature which says 1200. Up here, at the top, you can spin around and see a magnificent 360 degree view. It would be great to have brought a picnic or book or knitting and spend the whole day here. It feels good to be able to see natural beauty in massive abundance.

There is a swimming pool, olympic size, carved out into the stone. I heard it is not for swimming. It was a cistern, to catch rain water, then through a circuit of pipes allow gravity to deliver it down and down the hill to water the elaborate gardens. They say it still works 1600 after it's installation. One last thing, dragon flies, there are so many flitting about. It lends the scene an air of fairy tale fantasy.

With our driver Priyantha

Nearly down the hill we passed a snake charmer. He was unsmiling. He had two small round tortilla baskets.  The could have held tortillas, but they each had a cobra. The charmer played his pipe. The cobra, with a startling swift move, popped his head out of the small round basket. It was a short presentation. I did not sense danger. Mostly, the snake was fascinating. A cobra has a great shaped head. The cobra returned to his basket. Attention turned to a larger box, rectangular, which held another snake. One appropriate for human shoulders. Maybe it was a boa. First, it hugged Wes. Then me. It was cool and smooth. I would have been scared. I was not because the handler in a sarong was clearly the apparent master of the snake's behavior.

Back in the van ....
Men are working, shirtless, with wooden rakes in flooded muddy rice paddies. In a tree, there is a small hut for a gunman. He fires a shot into the air when an elephant tries to enter. Is that to say there are wild elephants roaming the town?

About the men in sarongs, knee length, calf length or to the floor. They look comfortable, but like an afterbath towel wrapped around the waist, how do ensure it stays put?

Noon, back at the Hotel Sigiriya Water Garden ....

Egg hoppers

We have had a full day. It is only noon. We left before breakfast. Now, we will have it, Sri Lankan breakfast. Curries, egg hoppers, interesting things. We seem to be one of only three occupied rooms here. Like it is all for us. We over ate. We took an hour break to wallow in the huge warm pool. It was neither warm nor cold, but just perfect. It is an infinity pool. We dangled arms over the infinity ledge. Straight ahead are the red earth paths of the lodge. They point directly to the Sigiriya Rock from our morning adventure. But closer to the pool, thirty feet away, begins a bird sanctuary. We dangled our arms over that mentioned ledge and watched egrets and herons and hawks, and birds with turquoise tops and orange bellies, as peacocks wandered to and fro.

At 3:30 PM back in the van ....

On the road to Dambulla, another Unesco World Heritage Sites. This time we visited a fully functioning Buddhist temple. A temple in caves, the underside of mountain top boulders. The caves have frescoes and between the five caves there are over 150 statues, mostly of Buddha. Of the frescoes and statues, some are as old as 2200 years old and some as young as 200 years.

The Dambulla site also required climbing about 500 feet up. Again, we were drenched. I muttered to myself, "it better be worth it". Before I could get actually cranky, we arrived to the caves and it was very much worth it.

Driving back to the lodge. It began to rain. Someone in the car said, "I would like to see an elephant". Voila, from the opposing direction and in the slow lane, meandering, in the dark and glistening wet was a wild elephant. It was eerie, rainy, dark, headlight lit.

Tonight, before dinner, we sipped a beautiful Bordeaux wine. At dinner we sat outdoors. The air was balmy and just right. We ate lightly. A little soup. A little salad. Over head a busy bat flitted scooping up the insects that might have given us company. Today, we saw two thousand years of Buddha related history. And our mini-safari, animals galore: a large iguana, herons, egrets, a bat and a wild elephant in the slow lane.