Hi folks. I hope things are going well for you today. Continuing with the trend of recent days, I am going to try to turn out another one of these blog entries. In fact, today I may even try to do two! Let’s see how that works out.
So, you will remember that Day 2 was in Sigiriya, and we would be continuing there for Day 3. Neither Laurianne nor I had slept especially well, but Laurianne had been even more uncomfortable. Dorothee, who had slept the best of the three, was ironically also the one who seemed to be coming down with a cold. Regardless, we were all looking forward to our Day 3 adventure which started with breakfast at 7:30 AM. We then departed at 8:24 AM, making a quick stop at 9:29 AM where I bought some natural mosquito repellant, and also attempted to find some simple sports sandals, but there was no luck with the footwear. After just 6 minutes, we were back in the vehicle and then arrived at the Ancient City of Polonnaruva at 9:50 AM. Admission was $30 USD each for non-SAARC citizens.
It was raining for most of the visit, but Erik had extra umbrellas available for us. Erik, who was also acting as “our guide” was certainly an outstanding driver and general chaperone, but not particularly helpful as “a guide”. To be fair, he was probably doing the “guide part” as an extra, but in particular when visiting an ancient archeological site, it really does help A LOT to have someone who really knows what they are talking about. He did however at least know to point out to us that even in the 12th century, they had indoor toilets in this ancient city, which is a rather remarkable feature, if not perhaps incredibly picture worthy.
For me, one of the additional annoyances of this visit was that I only had brought one pair of shoes on the trip, and while they were great for walking long distances in a variety of conditions, they were not ideal for rainy weather, and especially not ideal for a place with tons of ancient temples where they wanted you to take your shoes off to enter. That was why I had earlier been trying to find a simple pair of sandals to change into. Also, as pretty much all the “temples” were open air, that meant that one would be walking barefoot through water and there was also no covered place to keep shoes to keep them dry while it was raining.
Having read other recounts of trips here, it seems that being here on a rainy day had its pluses, since it can also be incredibly hot, with scalding rocks to walk across when it is sunny. So, on balance, it is probably better to visit here when it is overcast, but not raining, if you can somehow manage to perfectly find that combination. Given that I only had the one pair of shoes to get me through two weeks, I opted to simply not enter any of the temples . . . which I guess in some ways was a bit of a letdown, but certainly better than having soggy hiking shoes for the next several days. So, any of the pictures from inside the temples (think Buddhist statues) were taken by either Laurianne or Dorothee.
At 11:08 we came upon this huge “stone book”. One of the big things about this site was that it supposedly once had either a tooth, or the teeth of Buddha.
At 11:18 AM it had mostly stopped raining, and we arrived at what I think was the main Stupa of the site. While Laurianne, Dorothee and Erik walked inside, I walked around the perimeter and appreciated the details of the wall and the apparently still functioning drain system. While walking around, I saw that there appeared to be modern Buddha sculptures at every entrance except for the main one.
At 11:47 AM we arrived to yet another area where people were supposed to take their shoes off. There were carvings directly in the rock, similar to what can be seen in the carved caverns in the national park in Mumbai, but at a much smaller scale. Still, I do think that I would have sort of liked to enter this one, but it was just too complicated with my shoes, and the carving could at least be well seen from a distance, at least of the large Buddha.
We weren’t there long, and then at 11:59 AM arrived at the monastery complex. A friend of Erik who was along, showed me a super-secret side entrance where for some reason I was allowed to go with shoes, so there I saw most of what Dorothee and Laurianne also saw. Here there were a couple of things which drew my attention. The first was the recurring theme of the crocodile mouths for the drains. The second was how there were tiny little chubby men carved on a lot of the walls. This was the first time I could remember seeing that type of stylized human carvings on ancient architecture in this part of the world.
Another general characteristic which I kept noticing was the mixed use of brick and stone throughout the archeological site. Anyway, there was clearly a LOT more to see here, but we were also clearly only seeing the “trophy sites” since we would have needed a more insightful guide to appreciate anything else. Furthermore, it’s true that no matter how good your guide is, one can usually only handle a very limited amount of temples/churches/archeology/art in a single day.
Thus, by 12:22 PM we were back in the vehicle and heading to our lunch buffet spot, where we arrived at 12:30 PM. Of all the places we ate while travelling together, I think that this was my favorite. The hostesses did a wonderful job of explaining us a bit about the different foods; the presentation was of the food items was delightful, and it was also quite tasty. Lunch for the three of us was 10500 LKR ($35.92 USD).
On the way out, we also used the bathroom, which was simple, but once again spotlessly clean. We were back in the van at 1:30 PM headed to the safari place. I was keeping my expectations low, since my previous “safaris” have been less than super. But then I started revising expectations when right on the regular road we saw an authentic wild elephant!
At 2:23 PM we quickly left the van and entered our safari jeep, which was just for the three of us, where we paid 10500 LKR ($35.92 USD) each and the actual “safari experience began”. These are evidently 100% wild elephants which have never been domesticated nor held in captivity. On a daily basis, each adult elephant eats between 200 and 250 kg of grass, and under “normal” conditions, they can expect to live 80 years. Whenever there is a group of elephants together, they are all female, since adult male elephants apparently live mostly solitary lives except for their mating season. On a separate note, I later on read that this belief about “solitary male elephants” may not be completely true, but the information I read was all about African elephants, so maybe the same is not true of Asian elephants?
We actually saw a couple of different small herds, and then at 3:40 PM they stopped where there was a sort of large rock, and Dorothee and I walked up to see what could be seen while Laurianne opted to stay back in the jeep.
At 4:09 PM we were back in the jeep, and I figured that we were pretty much done with elephants for the day, but that was definitely not the case. At 4:16 PM we saw a mother and calf together, and we were particularly impressed at how they were “cleaning” the grass before eating it.
Around about 4:24 PM I was really starting to notice the orange spots on the ears and trunks of many of the elephants. When seeing those once before with my friend Elisabet during a show at Elephantastic in Phuket, she posited that these spots were the result of “abuse” by the elephant trainers. However, the guide on this safari said that these were just normal “age spots” . . . generally the more spots, the older an elephant is, similar to the sorts of spots many humans get on their hands and arms as they get older.
As you have no doubt noticed, pretty much the only animals we saw were elephants, but some of this may have been due to the continual light rain, which evidently elephants like quite a bit, but other animals not as much. Yes, it was really amazing to be so close to wild elephants, but at 4:30 PM we started to head out and by 4:36 PM we were once more back in the van and headed back to the homestay, where we arrived at 5:35 PM. The kindest thing to say about our dinner of fried rice was that it was lackluster, and unsurprisingly, the shower once more was not working properly. However, we did share a nice lager which Dorothee had picked up at some point. Not having anything else to do, at 8:55 PM we were in bed.
So, what did you think of Day 3. I could have included about 300 more pictures/videos of elephants as well as another 50 or temples, but I think those included here were enough for you to get the idea. Given that I had not actually read any part of the itinerary, like you, I was quite curious about what we might see/do on Day 4. Anyway, as always, thanks for reading along, and don’t hesitate to leave your questions and comments in the section indicated below.
Travels with Jay 