More ancient cities, beaches, and food in Sri Lanka

After Sigiriya I made my way to the ruins of the 2000+ year old city of Anuradhapura. The site is amazing, it's the best collection of ancient ruins I have been to so far, and most striking because after it was abandoned no one ever built over it. It just sat there in the jungle waiting to be rediscovered. This Dagoba looks like it is still under construction, I love that. Actually at the time it was built it was the 3rd tallest structure in the world. The other two were Egyptian pyramids.



Anuradhapura is also home to the Sri Maha Bodhi, a 2000 year old tree grown from a cutting of the tree in India under which The Buddha arrived at enlightenment. The bodhi tree here is actually older than the one currently in India at Bodh Gaya which itself was grown from a cutting of the original tree.



This is a tank (man made reservoir) in Anuradhapura called Tissa Wewa.



From Anuradhapura I went to Polonnaruwa, the city that replaced it over a thousand years ago. This site wasn't as impressive but had a lot more buddhist carvings and stuff. I got tired of taking my shoes and hat off to walk up to them.



My reward for exploring all these ancient cities and Buddhist sites was a trip to two deserted beaches on the east coast of Sri Lanka. Now when I say deserted I mean it. The first beach I went to had two resort hotels at one point but they were blown up by the Tamil Tigers. If they hadn't been blown up they would have been destroyed by the Tsunami in 2004 anyway. I shared a beautiful streach of beach about 1.5km long with 3 local fishermen. Then this beach, which was even longer but not as nice for swimming I had all to myself.



There is a village a couple km from the beach that has two guest houses. I picked the wrong one, owned by a woman named Victoria who told me her hard luck Tsunami stories, and complained about money, all the while talking about Jesus. She actually told me that the night before I arrived she had prayed to Jesus asking for help with money, and then I showed up. I feel like a walking ATM to these people as it is but her statement just confirmed it, I couldn't believe her bluntness. I spent about US$14 with her for the room, 4 meals and 3 bottles of water. That's actually about 2 weeks wages for some people in Sri Lanka, so I wonder if her prayer was answered. After she told me that, I didn't want to give her anymore money but she made this really good musli with fresh fruit and curd and honey to mix in with it and I ordered another one. I may sound a bit callous in my attitude toward her, especially considering all the warm statements expressed by other visitors in her guest book and the stories of travelers who had visited before the Tsunami and their outpouring of support after the Tsunami, but she has become complacent living off the generosity and charity of foreigners. Later she showed me arround her 6 acres of land, with her nice garden, large chicken pens, and 4 people who did not appear to be related to her working on the yard and around the house. I felt really uncomfortable there and wanted to leave the next day, a fact I surprised her with that night when I asked to settle my bill. (Maybe if she had prayed to God instead of Jesus I would have stayed for a couple days ;). My only real option for getting out of there right away (I was really in the middle of nowhere) was to wake up at 4 in the morning and walk the 5 km to the train station to catch the 6:15 am slow train to Colombo (a 10 hour train journey!). When I woke up I found myself basically locked in at the guest house by a door lock that was broken on the inside. I was able to jimmy it open with a coat hanger. Then the outer gate was locked as well and I had to climb it and jump over. It was still pitch black outside and the stars in the sky (which until now I had not seen in Sri Lanka at night due to rain) were amazing, and I saw the most brilliant shooting star as well. And this was after a crazy sunset the night before. Incredible!