Image: view of Sigiriya from Pidurangala
31 December 2023
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In short, Sri Lanka is fantastic. Green, friendly, beautiful, accessible, loads of culture and history, and very tasty food. It is an island the size of Tasmania with mountains in the south-central area, and the rest a landscape of rolling plains and hills edged by yellow sandy beaches and coral reefs. We were traveling in the dry season of the tropical climate but found ourselves accompanied by an unseasonal inter-monsoon. As a result, it rained most days which I think actually made the trip more comfortable with less sweating involved.
We were greeted by our driver, Chrishan, at Colombo Airport on a balmy Thursday evening. Yep, I was surprised with myself for hiring a driver, but hiring a driver is the done thing in Sri Lanka. Plus, Chrishan was recommended by a friend, and crunching the numbers told us it was an affordable arrangement. It was my first time being welcomed at an airport with a sign with my name on it. How novel.
Sri Lanka is a mostly cash economy so we needed to plan our ATM visits. My brain was in holiday mode and struggling with the exchange rate in moving between countries, so on the first visit to an ATM, I withdrew the equivalent of A$24. I only understood my mistake when no one laughed with me when I couldn’t pay our A$25 hotel bill.
We stayed our first and last nights in the seaside area of Negombo as it is close to the airport, has a beach and caters to tourists. It is also where a majority of Sri Lanka’s Christian population lives, and as it was still Christmas season, large nativity scenes were on street corners, in shop fronts and outside homes. I’d never seen so many baby Jesus’s. I was too busy staring to take photos – here’s a young lady squished into the back of a tuktuk instead.
Sri Lanka’s population of 22 million is approximately 70% Buddhist, 13% Hindu, 10% Islam and 7% Christian with many active in their faith. We saw temples, mosques and churches right across Sri Lanka. Horoscopes also play a major part in Sri Lankan life with astrologers being consulted on all life’s pertinent questions. Such as when to open a business, build a house, seek a promotion or retire. Astrologers analyse the suitability of a potential life partner based on birth dates, and using this information, advise on dates to get married and when to get pregnant. The astrologer will have an answer to any question you have.
The history of Sri Lanka is interesting, with evidence of human settlement dating back 12,000 years. Before the Portuguese (1597-1658), Dutch (1640-1796) and British (1796-1948) arrived, Sri Lanka had a series of 10 Kingdoms with the first established about 543 BCE. We visited the capital of the second kingdom – Polonnaruwa – which was active between 1090-1232 and is a vast, well-planned city in the central mountain area.
One king during this time, King Parakramabahu, was insistent that every drop of rain was used to benefit man, particularly in developing the land to ensure the kingdom was self-sufficient across the dry season. He oversaw the construction of large and small irrigation systems, the damming of rivers and the storing of water in vast reservoirs, which are all still used today and not in any photographs below.
An hour west is Sigiriya, a fortress, palace and network of caves on a 180m high rock, also called the Lion Rock. The boob-obsessed King Kashyapa established his pleasure palace at the top of the rock in the late 400s as he was expecting to be attacked by his brother in revenge for killing their father and needed to make it difficult for his brother to get to him.
The King also wanted to enjoy life so had landscaped gardens, paintings covering most of the rock, a giant lion carved out of rock and wood as the entrance, and a mirror wall made of highly polished white plaster for the King to look at himself. Today on the mirror wall you can see graffiti in Sinhalese script written by tourists dating back to between 8th and 10th centuries – one is translated to “I came with hundreds of people to see Sigiriya. Since all the others wrote poems, I did not!”. Funny.
One more story about a king. King Valagamba was overthrown by rebels around 100BCE and took refuge at Dambulla, a Buddhist monastery, built across 80 caves in a rocky outcrop. This king was into Buddha, so while plotting his reclaiming of the throne, he filled the caves with many statues of Buddha and one of himself for good measure. Today you can visit 5 of these caves which house 160 statues and detailed murals across the ceilings and walls. Very impressive.
After all this history, it was time to look forward and welcome the new year.
I love love love the picture of the fruit and veg man!