sri lanka: polonnarua, sigiriya, dambulla

Before I booked my flights to/from Sri Lanka I heard so much about how cheap the country is, how great the food is, how beautiful the country is, and how amazing the culture is. The last three of those were true, but how cheap the country is depends on quite a few things.

The first being where you are in the country. On the beach, I spent very little money. In the mountain towns I spent very little money. But in cultural capitals, with ancient historical sights, it was not cheap, or at least not nearly as cheap as I had been led to believe.

The main reason for this was the price of entry tickets to the ancient sights. There was always a much much higher price for foreigners to visit a place, than for locals. This post is about the next three places I visited in Sri Lanka, which all have ancient historical sights. The price for foreigners was usually arond ten times as high for foreigners, if not more.

Polonnarua was another city that was formerly the seat of royalty. It was built by the second big dynasty of Sri Lanka, the Chola dynasty. They built their city after invading and conquering Anuradhapura, waaaay back in the 10^th century.

It wasn't hard to get from Anuradhapura to Polonnarua, it was just a (surprisingly cheap) bus ride. I'd seen all sorts of posts about hiring personal drivers, but that seemed unnecessary, as there were plenty of direct buses between the cities.

I was the only foreigner on my bus, which would normally make me crazy; this time it was nice because locals made sure I had a seat, and made sure I got off at the right place. Polonnarua isn't a big city, so no one else was getting off the bus there.

Since most of the people arriving in Polonnarua are foreigners, there are usually a few people waiting at the bus stop to grab the foreigners and find them places to stay. This is what happened to me, and it worked out well. I got a single room (with two big beds,) for a more than reasonable price.

After unpacking I went out for the day. It wasn't immediately obvious where to buy the entrance ticket to the ancient ruins, as it was not at the biggest section of the ruins. The price was just as high as in Anuradhapura, I was just as (un)happy about paying so much.

The ancient ruins of Polonnarua are extensive. I think I visited most of the ruins, and I enjoyed what I saw, but by the end I was exhausted. Much of what I saw was similar to what I'd seen in Anuradhapura so I was a bit mentally exhausted by the end of the day as well.

It was another beautiful sunny day, with plenty of heat and humidity. I again wore a scarf on my neck to prevent more sun being soaked up by the very sunburnt skin on my neck. This time I was ready for the heat and humidity, I carried enough water in my snack bag and bought snacks as I went along.

Throughout the day I saw the remains of a few royal palaces, stupas, living quarters, monasteries, etc.... To be honest, by the end of the day it all looked the same. Some of the areas were busy with tourists, others were completely empty. I assume the busy sections were those on tour itineraries, the empty sections not so much. I don't know if that reflects on the 'importance' of each area.

Some of the religious areas are still considered holy, so I had to take off my shoes to see them. Other areas are not holy, so I kept my shoes on.

Since the on and off game with my shoes had started a couple days earlier, my feet were already raw, but I knew that wasn't going to get any better for the next few days. I probably looked like an old lady at times, hobbling around on burned feet while stepping on hot stone.

One particularly memorable section of the ruins at Polonnarua had the remains of a really really big Buddha on the back wall of a temple. This one stuck with me more than others, though I don't know why.

I loved the day of 'seeing' history, but it was a very long day, with a lot of walking. I had dinner at a random cafe, then walked home. When I got back to my accomodation I discovered that the wifi didn't reach into my room, so I sat out on a balcony of sorts. The mozzies ate me alive, but oh well.

The next morning I was up quite early in order to get a ride to the bus station in order to catch a bus to my next ancient cultural capital: Sigiriya.

The bus didn't actually stopped at Sigiriya, which isn't really a town. It stopped at the next town, where there were a few tuk tuk riders waiting for passengers like me. I was ready to walk to Sigiriya when the first driver proposed his price. 

I still overpaid when I ended up paying less than half of what he suggested, but he did drive me straight to a place to stay, so I chose not to care too much.

The place I stayed included breakfast in the price, but I knew I'd be leaving early the next morning, before breakfast was service. I was able to have breakfast on the day I arrived, instead of the next morning. Yay. Like most included breakfasts, it wasn't necessarily local food, because I'm pretty sure Sri Lankans don't eat sweet rolls for breakfast. 

Sigiriya is sometimes called the Lion Rock, it is on top of a 200 meter high rock that sticks up out of the landscape. The 'current' sight was made by King Kashyapa, who chose the location to build a fortress/palace to use as the capital of his kingdom. The building for this fortress palace took place in the 5^th century. I don't know Sri Lankan history well enough to know where this king fits in the whole chronology.

The actual history of the area goes back a lot further, probably back to at least 300 BC. And that's just for documented or proved history. Legends go back even further.

Sigiriya is a small enough area that most visitors come for just half a day. This one had an even higher price than the previous two places I'd been, with an even bigger difference between the local and foreigner price. I was so mad.

Since the ruins are on top of this huge rock, you have to climb a whole lot of stairs to get up there. There are a couple wider sections of stairs, but most of it is single file, which means major traffic jams of people. NOT FUN.

There was one section where being a foreigner was a benefit: we were shown to go up a section of stairs that was basically a shortcut up to a higher section. Locals were not allowed to go up this section. In the wider sections of the stairs there were a lot of locals jumping the queue, much to the frustration of every foreigner.

The most memorable section of these ruins were the giant lion's paws midway up the rock. This is where the name of the rock comes from, as they were the official gateway to the sight back in the day.

The top of the rock was nothing different from what I'd already seen. I still walked around all of it, but didn't stress about taking as many photos. From my point of view the best part of these ruins were the views over the entire area from the top of the rock.

After coming back down to ground level (more skinny stairs, yippee,) I walked around the less interesting ruins at that level. I liked the ponds, because I could see pretty reflections :)

Since Sigiriya is a village built up around a tourist sight, everything there is support for the sight. I had a late lunch/early dinner at a small cafe, the price was higher than I'd paid previously because it was not a place locals would eat. (The food was pretty good though, and I was left alone, woo hoo!)

By the time I got back to my room I was suffering from heat exhaustion, and I had heat rash. Ugh. There wasn't anything else to do in the area, so I was okay with laying in my room, drinking water and enjoying the breeze made by the ceiling fan.

The next morning I was up early again, and caught a local bus to my next stop, the city of Dambulla. The modern city of Dambulla isn't very interesting, at least not what I saw of it. It is mostly stretched out along one road, and nothing is all that pretty. When I got off the bus a tout saw me and brought me to a place to stay. My room was nothing special, but I'm never in the budget range for my accomodation to be particularly noteworthy.

Historians say there has been human life in the area of Dambulla possibly as far back as the 7^th century BC. I think they are able to carbon date things they've found in various cave homes in the area?

The only reason any visitors come to Dambulla is to see one of the best preserved cave temples of the country. Getting to the temple area was quite easy, the walk wasn't all that long from where I was staying. What wasn't fun were all the steps I had to climb. I guess I hadn't eaten or drunk enough, as I was feeling really weak while going up the stairs even though I was moving slowly.

Not surprisingly, there was a ticket office, and I think it was just for foreigners. Though the price was far lower than it had been during Anuradhapura, Polonnarua, and Sigirita, it was still heaps higher than for locals, who had to pay nothing. Argh.

These temples are still considered an active religious sight, so when I got to the top of all the steps I had to take off my shoes in order to enter the temple grounds. The whole thing is made of stone, so stepping on the bare stone without shoes wasn't fun, as it had been sitting in the hot sun for who knows how long.

This cave temple is actually a series of caves, most of them have a bunch of Buddha statues inside, and many of them are painted inside as well. None of them have amazing ventilation, they were all rather smelly.

A covered hallway/walkway has been built outside the caves, so visitors are able to go between the caves quite easily. It didn't take me all that long to see everything, and take all the photos, (never with any of the Buddhas behind me, as one should never turn their back to Buddha,) so I walked back down the hill and went out another entrance to the complex.

I also visited a very modern Buddhist temple, which was only a few meters down the street from the cave temple complex. This one was called the Golden Buddhist Temple, because there was a GIANT gold Buddha. Nifty, and again didn't take all that long to visit.

As both of these sights were on one end of town, and I felt as if I hadn't seen much, I walked toward the city center. At least, that's what I intended to do. After a while I realized there really wasn't a specific city center, so I just turned around. Dinner that night was just snacks from one of the markets I passed.

The next morning it was easy to get back to the bus stop and catch a ride to my next city.

As Anuradhapura and Polonnarua are basically visited for their ancient ruins, I don't need to see those again. Sigiriya is nothing but a tourist sight, and Dambulla is nothing in particular, so I'm not going back to either one of those cities either.

sri lanka: anuradhapura

I've wanted to go to Sri Lanka for years. It has been at the top of my New Years holiday list, but each year the tickets have been too expensive, or something else came up. This year it worked out, and I found decently priced tickets. YAHOO!!

Getting to Sri Lanka was not fun, nor fast. I flew from Moscow to Dubai, (5 hours,) then had 21+ hours in terminal 2 of Dubai International Airport. Not fun. At least wifi was good. The second flight was 4.5 hours, landing around 0100 at the main airport of Sri Lanka. I dozed on and off for a few hours, then went through passport control. 

At least two people in front of me had forgotten to get visas ahead of time, they had to step out of line to take care of that.

I took a bus to Colombo, which was about an hour. When I asked the price they initially told me 900 rupees. I knew that was completely ridiculous, though I didn't know how much the actual price should be. I'm sure my face showed what I thought of the price, so they quickly reduced it to 300 rupees. I'm fairly sure that was still too high, but for me it wasn't that bad.

When I got out of the bus at the train station the guy didn't give me the correct change, not by a long shot. 

He tried to pretend I gave him a different amount to pay, I knew exactly what he was trying to do. He had to go to several nearby fruit stalls to get change. Then he tried to tell me there was a baggae charge, but I'd already read about that scam, so I knew it wasn't true. Eventually, I got the change back that I wanted.

Even though it was only 0600 or so, the train station was packed. I walked up a small set of stairs into the station, I realized later it was the back entrance, whoops. I finally found the ticket office, there were at least 12 windows to choose from. 

I ended up buying a second class ticket, which was the cheapest this particular window had. Someone else showed me where my train would be, as there was no departures board that I could see.

My train actually left 12 minutes early. I was a bit freaked out, I worried I wasn't on the right train. I'm used to trains departing and arriving exactly on time. The guy sitting next to me said where he was going, and it made sense according to where I was going, so that was a relief. When I'm in a place where I can't read at all, nor understand the language, I get nervous about these things. 

Not too much later, the ticket checker came through the carriage, that was when I discovered I didn't have a seat reservation. The ticket checker indicated I should go to the 2^nd class carriage without seat reservations, but I had no idea where that was. What I could see was that the carriage in front of mine was absolutely PACKED. I wasn't the only one in my carriage without a seat reservation, so we all stood in the aisle.

As the train rumbled on, more and more people stood in the aisle. I think they all had second class tickets as well, though I'm not sure. 

The ride was anything but smooth, the carriage seemed to wobble back and forth regularly. It also seemed to go up and down, if that's possible. Apparently this is normal, but I was kinda worried.

Five hours later, the train arrived at Anuradhapura New Town Station. It wasn't the main station of the city, but I wasn't sure whether the train would stop at the main station.

Even though it wasn't the main station, there were still heaps of tuk tuk drivers and touts waiting for all the deboarding passengers. 

Several of them followed me, but I didn't take any of them up on their offers. I started walking down the main street of Anuradhapura, figuring I'd eventually find a place to stay.

It didn't quite work out that way. Eventually I turned off the main street, after seeing some signs pointing to accomodation. Even so, I didn't see anything, so I took the next tuk tuk who stopped to ask me if I wanted a ride. He took me to two places that were full before finding a place that had a room for me.

The room was fine, so I changed into dry clothes (everything I was wearing was damp, and I'd been wearing the same clothes for nearly 48 hours,) and went with the driver again. He took me to a small shop to buy a SIM card, and a place to get a cheap, but good lunch. I was thrilled with the prices for both, whoopee!

After lunch, I started walking. It was sunny and hot, a good 40 degrees (Celsius) warmer than what I'd left behind in Moscow. More humid too, but not as bad as I'd feared. Unfortunately, not long after I started walking, it started raining.

Pouring, actually. I stood under a tree for a while, until it wasn't keeping me dry anymore. I kept going along the road until I found an overhang, where I waited out the rain.

Eventually I got to my first sight, a ruin. From what I'd read in the guidebook, all of what I'd be seeing in the first few towns I wanted to visit would be ancient ruins. This was called Vessagiriya, and was once a small cave monastery. I could see some carvings in the rocks, and some old writing on other rocks.

Just as I was about to leave, it started pouring again. I was lucky enough to be close to a covered area, so I stayed there for the next 20 minutes or so. Rain is the only weather I really really don't like. I started walking again, stopping for a fresh squeezed orange juice at a street side stall.

My next sight was Isurumuniya Vihara, a rock temple. The area was packed with locals coming to pray, most of them dressed in white. There is an entrance fee, but only for foreigners. Argh. The price wasn't too high, but still, I hate being treated as a human ATM. 

Like many Buddhist sights, everyone has to take off their shoes before entering the religious area. Walking on the large grained sand in the area didn't feel great on my feet, little did I know just how much my feet would grow to hate this particular type of sand.

Behind this temple is a large reservoir. I got there as sunset was starting, so I got to see a lovely reflection in the mostly flat water. Plus there was a lovely path along the water, a perfect place to walk for a little while.

The path took me to another road, which I followed until I got to a big stupa/dagoba. This one was called Mirisavatiya, and was easy to visit. There were some altars set up, people were laying down small flowers and such. By the time I left, the sun was down. I didn't love the idea of walking home in the dark, but I wasn't the only one walking on the roads, so it wasn't so bad. About an hour later, I got home.

Since I hadn't had a proper sleep in what felt like foreva, I fell asleep early and slept hard that night. My room was far from luxury, but I had a bed, which felt pretty darn amazing.

The next morning I got up slowly, which didn't surprise me at all. (When I'm traveling by myself I don't get going nearly as fast in the morning.)

Sri Lanka is 2.5 hours ahead of Moscow, though the sun comes up over two hours earlier in Sri Lanka at this time of year than it does in Moscow. Basically, my body was totally confused.

I eventually got out the door around 10, it was a mostly sunny day. It didn't feel super hot at first, but I could feel the humidity. As I started walking, I started feeling the heat. 

Coming from a place that had been -10C, and Anuradhapura being 30C, this was a 40 degree temperature swing, which I felt pretty quickly.

As I walked along it felt like I heard honking nearly nonstop. I'm pretty sure 95% of the tuk tuks that passed me slowed down or stopped to ask if I wanted a ride. So annoying, I always wonder how often it works. One guy actually stopped four times to keep asking me, argh.

I had lunch at a random restaurant, choosing my food by pointing at whateva looked good. It was good, and it was cheap, woo hoo!

My first real sight of the day was a religious sight. It was a bodhi, or temple kindof thing. I checked my shoes with everyone else, then walked carefully into the area. There was sand in some places, but I was mostly on stone. I'm all for walking barefoot, but in direct sun, the stone heats up and it felt like I was walking on fire. Clearly the soles of my feet had some toughening up to do.

Since Sri Maha Bodhi is a religious sight, nearly everyone I saw was wearing at least some white, I definitely stood out. 

There were heaps of different places for people to pray, there were probably millions of prayers going up, while I was there. One of the forms of prayer is to walk clockwise around the stupa, so there were people in movement all the time, in addition to those who were praying while seated.

Some of the stairways had intricate carving, those were beautiful as well. There was a holy tree in one corner of the area, with a queue of people waiting for their turn to pray.

I know I'm not describing things well, but the area was huge, and words don't do justice to everything I saw.

After seeing everything in this area, I got my shoes back and kept walking. My feet were already tender, I knew they were going to be in pain by the end of the day, but it was worth it.

On the way to the next official sight I passed a set of ruins, called lowamahapaya (I think.) There weren't any pilgrims in and around all the columns, so I assume the ruins no longer have any religious significance.

Next up was another HUGE dagoba, called runvanvelisaya. There were smaller dagobas in each corner, but the big one was THE sight. 

I had to take my shoes off again, I left them with the gjillions of other shoes.

It seemed the main form of prayer at this dagoba was to circle around, I enjoyed watching everything. I also saw young men changing the prayer flags encircling the whole thing, which looked like a big process.

One of the most notable aspects of this property is the row of elephants who 'guard' the dagoba. Some of them are really old, others have been made to fill in the holes from elephants who fell apart. In all, there are 344 elephants!

My next sight was yet another dagoba. I suppose this is where it becomes obvious why Anuradhapura is a cultural capital of Sri Lanka. So much history, and so much faith is here.

Thuparma is said to be the oldest dagoba in Sri Lanka. There are columns sticking up around the whole thing, so it looked slightly different from the others I'd already seen. What wasn't different was the requirement to take off my shoes in order to visit. By this point the bottoms of my feet hurt, it didn't matter whether I was wearing shoes or not. 

The stone was hot to walk on, the sand rubbed my raw feet, etc...

Along with ancient religion, Anuradhapura used to be the home of Sri Lankan royalty. I followed the map and found an old palace, though it wasn't at all identifiable as such. It was basically the foundation, but nothing else. The cows hanging out on the property were more interesting, and from the way they watched me, they found me more interesting than the ancient palace.

Next up was another of the major sights of Anuradhapura. It is definitely one of the most expensive sights of the city. Entry for foreigners is $25USD, or the equivalent in local Sri Lankan rupees. From what I could tell, only foreigners were checked to see if they'd bought entry tickets. I hate being looked at as a human ATM.

The entire property of what used to be Abhayagiri monastery is really big. I wandered all over as much as I could, but I'm pretty sure I still missed some of it. 

Some of the dagobas still draw pilgrims, so you see piles of shoes every so often. The areas of more fascination to me (because I'd already seen so many stupas,) were the former living quarters, or at least what was left of them. The former chief monk would've been living in accomodations that had columns in the entryway; as usual, with great faith came great power.

My favourite part of the monastery grounds was called the Elephant Pond. Even though the name makes you think it was a bathtub for elephants, that's not true, it was a water reserve for the monastery. 

Basically a giant, man made pond. By the time I got there the sky was starting to show sunset, so most tourists were gone. It was quiet, and reflected the sky. I'm always a sucker for a reflection.

After the elephant pond I was done with the day, both physically and mentally. The walk home wasn't short, but it had finally cooled down a few degrees, so it wasn't as bad. I passed another giant dagoba on the way home, and took a few more photos, but just didn't care about the history of this particular stupa.

By the time I got home the sunburn I'd 'earned' all day long had developed into a dark red colour. I didn't feel it too much, but I knew that would change by the next day.

Waking up was tough. My feet were still tired, the weather wasn't so great, and my neck was super tender from my sunburn.

I stayed in my room for most of the morning, hoping the rain would stop. It let up around noon, so I went to another random restaurant for lunch. It started raining again while I ate, so I hung out longer at the restaurant than I'd originally hoped.

When the rain got a little lighter I walked back to the dagoba I'd seen last night on my way home. I wanted to see if it was at all different in daylight. Since it was raining, I was the only visitor at the time. Woo hoo!

After the dagoba I nearly ran back to my room. I'd made arrangements to do a half day trip to a place not far away, called Mihintale. Mihintale is a mountain upon which a Buddhist monk and a King met, and their meeting essentially brought Buddhism to Sri Lanka.

Mihintale is another massive religious sight. It sits on top of a mountain, so visiting means walking up a LOT of stairs. While I was in my room I grabbed my camelbak, so I could have water to drink while heading up all the stairs.

The guidebook talks about the sunset view from this area, and I suppose it really is nice when there is sun. The entire time I was there it was pouring rain, ugh. My driver loaned me an umbrella, which helped a little, but I was still pretty wet by the time I got back down all the stairs. Water was pouring down the upper level of stairs, which made walking all kinds of fun. 

(Since this is a religious place, we all had to take off our shoes.)

There were a couple areas that seemed more abandoned than others, of course those were the places that interested me the most. There is something about Mother Earth taking back something built by man. (When things start growing on a stupa, for instance.)

Due to the crazy rain, I didn't stay on top all that long. If the weather had been clear I might've stayed at least another hour, just to watch all the people.

My tuk tuk was waiting for me when I came back, it was a quick drive back to Anuradhapura. The next morning I had to be up early, so I could catch an early bus to my next destination. The tuk tuk driver didn't show, but it was easy to flag another one down on the street.

Overall I really liked Anuradhapura, though it is an intense place to visit. So much history and culture and religion and heat and humidity.

russia: moscow: holiday lights

Dark comes really really early around this time of year, it's dark before I walk out of school for the day. The last time the girls and I did a weekend trip we flew, so we took a taxi into the city from the airport. Because there were three of us, it ended up being faster and cheaper than taking the aeroexpress train.

The taxi drove through an area of town that was decorated for the season, I loved it. I made a note of where it was, and decided to return one evening.

After school I started walking, arriving at Park Pobedy more than an hour later. The entire walk was along a major road, it was easy to figure out where to go. It's easy to recognize the area because there is a huge victory arch in the middle of the street.

The arch area had a depiction of a huge sleigh, with Ded Moroz (the Russian version of Santa,) and Snegurechka (Ded Moroz's granddaughter,) along for the ride. Very pretty.

Another area of the park had a massive set of lights set up. There were lights in the shape of a couple dancing, and more of people skating, etc...

I could also see a couple huge ornaments, with the lights changing colour.

I got to see a light show in a tunnel of lights, set to music that was booming out really loudly, I'm not sure from where.

Basically, this walk was just so I could take pictures of pretty holiday lights.

Later in the week I went back to a church I'd first seen in autumn. The church at Fili was just as pretty in the snow as it had been in the golden light of fall. I don't think I need to see it in spring or summer.