Anuradhapura: Stupas and Coconuts
We had a leisurely 9.30am start to see the ancient ruins. Anuradhapura is one of the ancient capitals of Sri Lanka, and today considered sacred to the Buddhist world. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a great number of renovated monuments, temples and historical sights are spread out over a large leafy area, too large to do on foot. Not cheap either, as a ticket to see most of the major sites is US$25 each.
We were happy to be guided by our driver Rohan, and he motored us from site to site, kindly getting us as close as he could to the entrances of temples and stupas and ruins. This sounds rather precious, but as the day warmed up to well over 30 C collapsing back into the air conditioned car after a very hot walk around a stupa was heavenly. As for the sights themselves, an overwhelming number of them.
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| Guard Stone 7 - 9 Century A.D. |
Most of the religious sites require the removal of shoes and hats, so we are gradually hardening up our soft European feet as we walk around the temples and stupas. This is usually on a sand (I hesitate to add the word “fine” here) or paving stones, and the latter gets very hot in the midday heat. We’ve been surprised at how few Western or Asian tourists we’ve seen in Anuradhapura, with most of the visitors to the sites being Sri Lankan. Sunday is a popular day for locals to visit the sacred sites, so many places were crowded from mid morning onwards with Sri Lankans dressed mostly in white, which is regarded as appropriate dress for religious sites.
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| Sunday visitors to the sacred sites in Anuradhapura |
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| Flower seller selling lotus flowers next to the temples |
We had two sessions seeing the sights today, going back to the hotel at midday when it was way too hot to be walking around. From our hotel it was a short stroll to a nearby guest house for a Sri Lankan lunch of curry, and late afternoon we resumed our sightseeing with Rohan and ticked off the last remaining stupas. The sights of Anuradhapura are dotted around a large area of well maintained leafy roads and a few small lakes, and road access strictly controlled by barriers and ticket offices. The whole area is well managed and protected and it’s a very pleasant place to spend a day. Lots of monkeys everywhere!
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| Monkeys watching the world go by! |
We saw a number of amazing monuments but a memorable one is Abhayagiri Stupa. This stunning structure was built in 88 BC and as we walked around the around the base of this huge brick stupa we marvelled at the effort it must have taken to construct. It’s regarded as one of the greatest structures of the ancient world, it’s scale matched only by the Egyptian pyramids at Giza. Not far away we saw a similar looking stupa, Jetavanarama Dagoba, built in the 3rd Century, and the third tallest structure in the world at the time it was built (after the pyramids in Egypt). Seeing so many ancient buildings in one day you do need a bit of imagination to appreciate the scale of the ancient city and the complex religious societies that existed here so long ago.
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| Abhayagiri Stupa: if you can zoom in, Gordon's in the forefront. This was a hot walk in bare feet! |
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| Jetavanarama Stupa |
In between stupas and ruins we stopped to sample a king coconut, native to Sri Lanka, from a roadside seller. In a matter of seconds the stallholder chopped the top off the orange coloured coconut with a sharp machete and with a straw we drank the delicious coconut water. Afterwards the coconut was cut in half and we ate the slimy white coconut flesh, also delicious. Definitely felt perkier after the coconut stop!
Returning wearily to the Randiya Hotel at 5pm we made our way to the hotel’s deserted swimming pool and were excited to discover there a bar with alcohol. We’d read that alcohol is not readily available in the region, so a couple of gin and tonics lifted our spirits as we recalled the day’s sights. Having eaten so well at lunch time and with our bellies full of drinks (we did only have 2 each!) we skipped dinner this evening and were in bed and asleep by 8.30pm. Just as well, as Monday morning’s alarm was set for 5.30am.
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