I finally left Jaffna about noon on the 5th, after spending a lot more time there than I had planned. While there I saw very few tourists, maybe ten the whole time I was there. My bus was heading south to Mannar, an island just off the northwest coast of Sri Lanka about 70 miles from Jaffna by road. The bus first headed east from Jaffna before turning south and crossing the Jaffna Lagoon, maybe ten miles west of Elephant Pass, over a several mile long causeway with an arching bridge part way along the causeway. There were a few fish traps in the lagoon, which was shallow here but not as shallow as at Elephant Pass.
Once over the lagoon the bus headed south on a road that more or less paralleled the coast (Palk Bay), but we never saw it. The dry terrain consisted mainly of sparse yellow grass and shrubs, with palmyra palms, but one section was a sort of dry forest with some lovely trees and dense underbrush. There were a few army camps along the way, and few houses and towns.
Mannar is a long, thin island about 20 miles long with its southeast end just off the coast. After traveling more than three hours we reached the causeway and later bridge that reaches the island. I spotted some black headed ibises searching for food in the shallow water as we crossed the causeway. The town of Mannar is just over the bridge with a mostly ruined fort just to the north of the bridge as you reach the island. The bus arrived about 3:30 on a cloudy afternoon and I found a very nice little guesthouse for only 1000 rupees, less than $8, the cheapest I've paid here in Sri Lanka.
I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around town, passing a cricket match in a dusty pitch and then walking along the town's main street and eventually on a road to a baobab tree, native to Africa, on the outskirts of town. There are lots of churches in town, and I've read that the island is 40% Catholic. The Muslims were driven out by the Tamil Tigers, but some have obviously returned, judging by the dress I saw on some of the women and men. Mannar is in the Tamil part of the country.
The baobab tree is enormous and, unlike most of the baobab trees I have seen in Africa, was in full bloom with its gnarly branches covered with leaves. Among the leaves were pale red flowers and small fruit. Often these trees are leafless and look like they have been planted upside down, with their roots sticking up in the air. A sign next to the tree said its circumference is 19.51 meters (how's that for precision? not 19.5 but 19.51), about 64 feet, and its height 7.5 meters, almost 25 feet. So its trunk is almost as wide as the tree is high. The sign also said it was "planted by Arabian sailors in or around 1477." I wonder how they arrived at that date. There was some graffiti on the elephant hide like bark.
From the baobab tree I walked back to the bridge that connects the island to the causeway. A sign said it was built by the Japanese in 2010 and is about 500 feet long. The remains of the partially destroyed old bridge run alongside. I've read that the old bridge was blown up in 1990 during the civil war, cutting off the island for seven years, so there must have been another bridge from 1997 to 2010. With the wind blowing strongly and the sky cloudy it was cool on the bridge at the end of the afternoon, with good views of the fort and lagoon. I stayed there until after sunset.
The next morning I walked to the bridge and then the fort. The morning was cloudy at first, but then the sun came out while I was exploring the fort. Mannar was taken by the Portuguese from Jaffna in the 16th century because of the pearl banks just south of it. (Apparently there is a Bizet opera entitled The Pearl Fishers set in Mannar.) As late as 1905 there were 5000 pearl divers recovering 80 million oysters a year, but now the industry is dead.
The Portuguese built the fort and the Dutch expanded it. I spent a couple of hours exploring it. When I entered several little donkeys were grazing on the yellow grass. One was a furry little newborn. The adult donkeys are small, only about three feet tall at the shoulder. Mannar was the first place I saw donkeys in Sri Lanka. I had seen several along the streets of downtown Mannar the afternoon before. They don't seem to be used for anything.
Among the ruins is one building that was a church. Inside is the stone top of a Portuguese tomb dating from the 1570's. There are several stone Dutch grave markers on the floor, the earliest from 1697 and the others from the 1700's. An English plaque memorializing a father and mother is on the wall. Palmyra and coconut palms grow among the ruins in the square fort, with bastions at the four corners. Lots of fallen purplish palmyra fruit lay all around.
I wandered through the many ruined buildings and then walked along the walls. There were many crows flying about, some with pieces of grass in their beaks for building nests. As I walked along the walls near some palmyra palms, a crow hit me in the back of the head. I must have been to close to its nest. A little later on another did the same thing and others flew close to me, hovering overhead. I took to running along the walls waving my arms when I got close to trees and managed to avoid further attacks.
After lunch I hopped onto a bus destined for Thalaimannar, the town at Mannar Island's far northwest end, 20 miles away. I sat on it for about an hour before it finally left shortly after 1, taking about an hour to reach Thalaimannar. En route there were some views of Palk Bay to the north and I saw a few baobab trees also, one that seemed to be hollowed out. I saw a lot more palmyra palms in the sandy soil. A few donkeys grazed along the road, but more cows and goats. We passed through two little towns and followed the newly renovated railroad tracks. Just before reaching Thalaimannar the bus turned off the main road to pass by the brand new train station near the jetty where the ferry to Rameswaram in India used to depart. I wonder if there are plans to resume the ferry, as I can't think of any other reason to rebuild the train tracks to the jetty.
Thalaimannar seems to be more of a village than a town. I walked five or ten minutes north and reached the coast, which I walked along for about half a mile to the west. The road ended at a rudimentary navy base which I wasn't allowed to enter. I did walk from the road across the scrub and then through some very short mangroves, at most a foot high, to reach the beach. Running the 20 miles or so from the tip of Mannar to India is Adam's Bridge, a series of sandbanks and islets. The name comes from the theory that when Adam was expelled from Paradise, in Sri Lanka, he traveled across this "bridge." It was in fact an isthmus connecting India and Sri Lanka when the seas were lower. In the Ramayana this is the route Hanuman and later Rama take to reach Lanka, slay its demon king Ravana, and rescue Sita. I had hoped to see something, perhaps some of the islets. I could see the coast of Mannar to the west and maybe one islet off the coast.
I walked back to Thalaimannar, arriving about 3:30 after being barked at by five puppies hiding in the thicket of thorn bushes along the way. Rather than wait for the bus I walked along the road south through a sort of palmyra forest. The sky had clouded up so it was now cooler and the spiky palmyra trees were very interesting to see up close. The bus came by after 4, sooner than I would have preferred, as I was enjoying the walk. An hour later I was back in the town of Mannar and again walked out to the bridge and later to the fort before sunset. The sky was cloudy but there was a bit of color at sunset.
It was hot and sunny the next morning at 10:30 when I left on a bus heading southeast to Anuradhapura, 70 miles and two and a half hours away. My bus had paintings of St. Francis holding the baby Jesus, or some baby, plus another of the full grown Jesus, at the front. Before we left I spotted another bus with a large painting of a ferocious looking eagle on the side, with a small portrait of Jesus on the door above the words "Don't Be Afraid." After crossing the bridge and causeway and reaching the mainland, the bus stopped at a small roadside shrine with a statue of St. Francis. One guy from the bus, not the driver or the ticket conductor, hopped off, removed his sandals, and prayed before the statue while we waited. He finished, hopped back on board the bus, and off we went.
The first hour or so of the trip was on a poor road, with lots of the culverts en route being rebuilt. After that first hour, the new road was smooth and much faster. We followed the recently rebuilt railroad tracks through scrub and sandy soil at first, with thicker forest and taller trees the further we went inland. Nearing Anuradhapura the forest seemed quite thick, though this is a dry area, with rain only from about October to December. We reached Anuradhapura about 1 and I found a very nice place to stay, sort of a homestay in a family home with several rooms for tourists.
For more than a thousand years Anuradhapura was the dominant city in Sri Lanka and for much of that time one of the most magnificent cities in the world. The chronicles say it was founded in the 4th century B.C., but it may have existed earlier. In the 3rd century its king and his followers were converted to Buddhism, supposedly by the son of the great Indian Buddhist Emperor Ashoka. The city's prosperity was based on the building and maintenance of great reservoirs, or tanks, that provided water for agriculture during the long dry seasons. The water system was quite elaborate and allowed the kingdom to produce enough rice and other crops to support armies and massive building projects. However, the city was often conquered and plundered by Tamil kingdoms in India, or even taken over by Tamil generals in its own armies. Its final destruction came in 993 after it was conquered by the great Chola king Rajaraja I, who established a Tamil kingdom with its capital in Polonnaruwa. Still, when a Sinhalese king finally conquered Polonnaruwa in 1056, he chose to be crowned in Anuradhapura, though he made his capital in Polonnaruwa. At the end of the 13th century, as Polonnaruwa fell and was abandoned as the Sinhalese moved south, Anuradhapura, too, was abandoned (except, apparently, by a few monks) until rediscovered by the British in the 19th century.
The ruins at Anuradhapura are extensive and the greedy government charges foreigners $25 to see them, with the ticket good for only one day. However, unlike at Polonnaruwa, the ruins are not fenced in and are so extensive that there are not ticket checkers everywhere. About 3 I took a bike from my guest house and biked to the southern area of the ruins. The ruins generally are west of the new town established by the British in the 19th century and now with about 70,000 people. To get to them I had to bike only two or three miles, first along city streets and then through the countryside of rice paddies. The town has three tanks, two to the west and one to the east. I headed towards the Mirisavatiya Dagoba between the two western tanks and, along with another tourist on a bike I met while looking for it, finally found it. Almost all the signs along the way are in Sinhalese, with few in English. Anuradhapura is a major pilgrimage site for Sri Lankan Buddhists, second only to the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy.
The dagoba (stupa) is fully restored, or rather rebuilt, and is painted bright white. Its first version dates from the 2nd century B.C., built by Sri Lanka's most admired king, Dutugemunu, after he conquered the city, completing his conquest of the island. It was rebuilt over the centuries and before its most recent restoration resembled a weed and tree covered hill, like all of Anuradhapura's dagobas.
South of the dagoba, along the eastern edge of one of the tanks are some ruins in what was a royal pleasure garden. One of the pools in the gardens has several wonderfully carved bas reliefs on the stone outcrops next to it of what look to be very happy elephants playing among lotuses in the water. The area was very nice, filled with trees, and we were the only people there.
South of that is a temple with more elephant bas reliefs around its much larger pool, though the bas reliefs of the elephants are not as fine as in the gardens. A small museum contains some other very fine sculpture and a modern reclining and very colorful Buddha lies in a building with swallow nests in one dark corner. As I was examining the nests, a swallow flew right past me and into a nest. I saw its small head pop out of the nest several times just a few feet from me. Next to this building is a cleft in the rocks filled with thousands of small bats clustered all over each other. We climbed up to the top of the rocks, with views of the dagobas to the north, rice paddies to the east, and the tank to the west, over which the sun was setting. We had to walk back through the gardens to get our bikes. A couple of langur monkeys were sitting on stones in the gardens eating hard green mangoes. I got back to my guest house just before dark and had a very good dinner there.
The next morning, after a good breakfast with eggs, toast, fruit, and tea, I headed back to the ruins on my bike about 8:30. Besides the southern ruins that I had visited the day before, there are four major sets of ruins, including the ancient citadel and three monasteries. Each area covers many acres. Two monasteries are south of what was the walled citadel and I headed to the earliest of the two, the Mahavihara, founded in the 3rd century around the bodhi tree that grew from a sapling from the bodhi tree under which Buddha obtained enlightenment in Bodhgaya in India, the sapling having been brought to Anuradhapura by Ashoka's daughter. At least that is the story.
Passing an army camp near a lotus filled pond and then along the shores of the northernmost of the two western tanks, I headed first to the gleaming white, fully restored and rebuilt Ruvanvalisaya Dagoba. It is a big one, about 180 feet high, but only the third biggest in Anuradhapura. It is, however, the most important religiously, as it is believed to hold several relics of Buddha. Just in front of the entrance is a big sign with photos of the dagoba before (1890) and after restoration. In the 1890 photo it looks like a big mound covered in trees and bushes, with a few stone pillars in front of it. The pillars are still there, but everything else now is vastly changed. Shoeless and hatless, as required, with lots of pilgrims mostly clad in white, I wandered around the big courtyard on all sides of the dagoba. The glare from the big white dagoba was almost too much. A small procession came by, with a couple of umbrellas over some of the marchers and two drummers and one guy with a small oboe.
Donning my hat and sandals again, I walked south along the pedestrian path towards the bodhi tree, passing lots of garbage littering the grounds under the trees. Anuradhapura gets hordes of pilgrims and they mostly just throw their trash wherever they want. Just before reaching the bodhi tree I passed the remains of a 2nd century building that is said to have been nine stories high with a thousand rooms. Only a forest of stone columns remains, some 1600 of them, it is said. They are all fenced off.
By the time I reached the bodhi tree it was about 11. The tree is second only to the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy as the most highly prized site for pilgrims and I've been told there are big crowds early in the morning. It wasn't very crowded when I arrived. The complex, which is entered after a police check, has four levels of terraces with golden railings, the top two closed off to the public. On the top terrace is the original bodhi tree brought from Bodhgaya, supposedly planted there over 2200 years ago. On lower terraces are several more bodhi trees, all said to have been grown from saplings from the original. The bodhi tree in Bodhgaya was destroyed soon after its sapling reached Anuradhapura and the one there now was grown from a sapling brought from Anuradhapura.
The bodhi tree on top is not particularly impressive, and does not seem so very old. One limb is held up by golden poles. On the highest terrace that you can climb to (the third highest) are several altars, and pilgrims were depositing flowers, usually lotuses, on them and then praying. Many people were sitting on the sandy ground and praying, or just sitting. Colorful Buddhist prayer flags hung from the railings and elsewhere. Some of the pilgrims handed some sort of folded fabric to an attendant standing on stairs leading to the second highest terrace. When he had a large enough stack of them he took them up to the second highest terrace and deposited them along the railing of the highest terrace. I wandered around for an hour or so watching all the activity.
I walked back to my bike, which I had left near the big dagoba. Before reaching it I stopped at a ruined little brick dagoba under some beautiful rain trees to drink some water and eat some cookies. It was midday and hot. The trees were full of birds, and monkeys, both langurs and macaques, were in the trees and on the ground. A guy with a large and colorful cobra in a basket displayed it for tourists. From where I sat I had a good view to the east through the trees of the massive brick Jetavana Dagoba, Anuradhapura's and the world's largest.
I biked to get a better view of the Jetavana Dagoba and then turned around and headed to the Thuparama Dagoba, dating from the 3rd century B.C. and the earliest one in Anuradhapura. It is relatively small, only about 65 feet high, and fully restored and rebuilt and painted a bright white. It is a pretty little dagoba, surrounded by four concentric rows of stone pillars of diminishing height, most still topped with capitals decorated with eroded geese. Not all the pillars are still standing, and several lean. It is thought that perhaps they supported a roof over the dagoba. The place was full of glare at 2 in the afternoon. The stone courtyard all around it was now too hot for bare feet. I put on a pair of black socks I had brought with me.
From the dagoba, with my sandals back on (and my socks off), I walked to some more ruins of monastery buildings, usually just foundations with lots of stone pillars. One had an excellent moonstone at the entrance, with more wonderful carvings on the balustrades along the stairs into the building.
I next biked east to the ruins of the Jetavana Monastery east of the Mahavihara Monastery. This was the newest monastery, founded in the 3rd century A.D. by a king having a dispute with the Mahavihara Monastery. I managed to get by the ticket checkers at the south side of the monastery by entering it over a small bridge on the west. Its centerpiece is the huge Jetavana Dagoba, unpainted but restored in brick and standing about 240 feet high. Originally it is supposed to have been 400 feet high, and when built was the third highest building in the world, after the two highest pyramids at Giza in Egypt. I approached it walking past the foundations of monastery buildings, including one ruined building with the remains of a stone door jam more than 25 feet high. It is thought to have been an image house holding a large standing Buddha. Under the cracked lotus plinth inside a latticed stone tray, with 20 or so cubicles for relics, is visible.
I reached the huge dagoba and walked around the big stone platform surrounding it. I wore my socks to protect my tender feet from the hot stone. Few others were there. The dagoba is still the largest and tallest structure in the world made entirely out of bricks, an estimated 90 million of them. Originally it took a quarter century to build. The reconstruction was finished in 1981. The bulbous lower portion is topped by a cube with a broken brick spire atop the cube.
I wandered through the ruins, mostly foundations, south of the dagoba. There are also quite a few stone pillars, particularly at what was the chapter house, a well preserved stone pool, and an unusual stone latticed railing around what might have been a bodhi tree or an image house. A big langur monkey was sitting on the rail as I approached. Several others were around and I watched them for a while. About 6 I started biking back to my guest house, which took about 20 minutes.
The next morning I left by bike from my guest house a little after 8, heading to the ruins of the Abhayagiri Monastery, the most northerly, north of the citadel. It was founded in the 1st century B.C. and soon surpassed Mahavihara as the largest and most influential monastery. In the 5th century A.D. it had 5000 monks and was more open to new currents of Buddhist thought than the more conservative Mahavihara Monastery. Lots of foreigners came to study there, including the famous Chinese traveler Fa Hsien, or Fa Xian, in the early 5th century, about 1411-12.
On the way ticket checkers at two stops yelled for me to stop but I just biked past smiling and waving and saying something incomprehensible. I biked through the east side of the monastery and beyond it for a couple of miles to the remains of a stone bridge over a little stream. It is made of big slabs of rectangular stone. The people along the way were friendly and I think a little surprised to see me.
I biked back to the monastery and then along a dirt road well before the ticket checkers. I spotted the ruins of an old pool, with a jumble of rectangular cut stone that formerly lined the walls. Through the trees I biked to the east side of the giant Abhayagiri Dagoba, parked my bike, and then walked around the large stone platform surrounding it. At about 10 it was early enough in the morning that I didn't have to wear my socks. The dagoba supposedly marks a spot where Buddha left a footprint, standing with one foot there and the other one on Adam's Peak. The original dagoba dates from the 1st century B.C., but was enlarged in the 2nd century A.D., rising to about 380 feet in height, only slightly shorter than the Jetavana Dagoba. Until just a few years ago it was under restoration, with workers tearing off the trees and bushes and adding new bricks. Around the dagoba are many little hillocks, only a few feet high, with trees growing on top. I wonder if they are overgrown little stupas.
At the southern and main entrance to the platform on which the dagoba sits are two little shrines with ancient statues of fat dwarfish attendants of Kubera, the god of wealth, which stand guard at the dagoba. The statues are now in modern little buildings.
From the dagoba I biked west into an area full of ruins, again mostly foundations, of the monks quarters, a very pretty area, quiet and sheltered by many trees. There is much less garbage on the Abhayagiri Monastery grounds, and fewer pilgrims come up here. Lots of monkeys were around. One building among these ruins is thought to be where the Tooth Relic was kept. Nearby is a large stone pool full of water with swirling patterns of bright green algae on top. Further along is the monks' refectory with a huge stone trough used to hold rice donated to the monks, probably enough for all 5000 of them. Along the way are a couple of statues of the meditating Buddha. Finally I reached a huge stone pool, called the Elephant Pool because of its size, 530 by 175 feet, and 100 feet deep.
From there I headed north to see some other ruins with well preserved moonstones and guardstones and had the bad luck to park my bike right next to a ticket checker. I acted dumb, asked where I could buy a ticket, and biked off the way I had come. I biked past the Elephant Pool again and then further south and then east to the brightly white painted Lankarama Dagoba, a relatively small one dating from the 1st century B.C. and thought to be part of a nunnery. It has been overly modernized, so I soon headed further east and entered the former citadel from the north. Almost nothing remains. The western walls are now only a long dirt mound. There are a few houses and shops along the road through the citadel. I biked to the ruins of a royal palace near the southern entry. It is a small one, and a late one, built for the coronation of the king who recaptured Polonnaruwa from the Tamils in the 11th century. Not much remains. There are some more ruins further north, including what may have the very first Temple of the Tooth. The ruins of a refectory had another of those huge rice troughs.
The day had been cloudier than the previous ones, with more wind, which was welcome. About 4 I biked south out of the citadel and back to the Jetavana Monastery, crossing into it over the little bridge I had used the day before. For the rest of the afternoon I just wandered around among the ruins and trees watching the dozens of monkeys, both langurs and macaques. About 6 I started biking back to my guest house, a little bit more difficult in the wind on well used bicycle. Just once while traveling it would be nice to be able to ride a decent bicycle.
The next morning was cloudy and windy as I set off on my bike about 8:30 heading back to the ruins of the Abhayagiri Monastery, about a half hour ride away. I finally bought the $25 one day ticket and then biked first to the ruins of the monastery's chapter house west of the giant dagoba. The ruins of what once was a five story building aren't much, but the entrance steps have a very finely carved guardstone, with the usual nagaraja figure standing next to a dwarf and with a multi-headed cobra hovering over him. Nearby are a couple of other ruined buildings with excellent moonstones, the half moon shaped stones in front of entry stairs. These two both contains all four animals, elephants, bulls, lions, and horses, plus lotuses, foliage, and a row of geese. Some later moonstones, which were meant to be stepped on just before entering a building, omit bulls, in deference to Hindus as a bull is Shiva's sacred animal, and lions, as they are symbols of Sinhalese royalty. I wandered around the quiet, forested area, with several ruins of stone pillars, many leaning haphazardly. A cave with a rudimentary brick structure and very old inscriptions on the rocks is nearby.
I then biked to an area east of the giant dagoba to two very large and well preserved stone pools next to each other, used for the monks' ritual bathing. Water came in through a stone conduit to a small pool with several levels right beside the smaller of the two large pools. Here the silt would settle before the water flowed into the smaller of the two large pools, and then from that pool into the larger one. Between the pools and the dagoba is a pretty forested area with several ruins, mostly just restored foundations, plus a very fine Buddha statue in the meditation pose.
By now it was about noon and I sat under the trees and ate some cookies I had brought with me. I was soon joined by a couple of macaque monkeys and their very small babies clinging to their undersides. I did throw them bits of my cookies.
About 1 I biked to the nearby Abhayagiri Museum in a modern building and after that I biked further south to the Jetavana Museum in an old colonial building on the southern edge of the Jetavana Monastery ruins. Both museums had some interesting sculpture and other items. The latter had photos of the six main dagobas before and after restoration. The Abhayagiri, Jetavana, Ruvanvalisaya, and Mirisavatiya dagobas were completely covered with trees and bushes, looking like oddly shaped hills. The smaller Thuparama and Lankarama dagobas also had trees and bushes growing on them, but with some of the brick facing still visible.
After visiting the Jetavana Museum, I wandered around the ruins of the monastery again and sat for a while and ate some more cookies. Then I biked to the nearby Ruvanvalisaya Dagoba where I spotted an elephant chained to trees and munching some palm fronds and other foliage provided for him. I watched him for a while and then explored some ruins just west of the dagoba, a couple with moonstones much simpler than the usual ones, the row of animals consisting of only nine of them, three elephants and two each of horses, lions, and bulls.
I biked further south to the ruins of a refectory near the Mirisavatiya Dagoba, with another one of those long stone troughs for rice donated for the monks. From there I biked further south, back to the royal pleasure gardens I had visited my first afternoon in Anuradhapura to see again the wonderful elephant bas reliefs carved into the stone outcrops next to pools.
From there I biked still further south to stone outcrops that formed the core of yet another monastery, the Vessagiriya Monastery, of which almost nothing remains. However, I enjoyed climbing up and around the giant boulders for views of the countryside, full of trees and rice paddies. I could see the white Mirisavatiya Dagoba and, further away, the bigger red brick Jetavana Dagoba in the distance. While clambering among the boulders, some bigger than houses and seemingly balanced precariously on the stone outcrop, I came across a white clad, white bearded old man meditating under one of the biggest boulders. I wandered around the area as long as I could and then biked back to my hotel, getting there just before dark.
The next morning about 9 I took a bus only about 8 miles east, but a slow, crowded bus ride of almost an hour, to Mihintale, a rocky hill famous as the place where Buddhism was introduced to Sri Lanka. At the foot of the hill ancient stone stairs, very wide, lead up past frangipani trees in flower. About a hundred feet up I took a side set of narrower stairs another hundred feet up to the Kantaka Chetiya Dagoba. The dagoba is only about 40 feet high (originally thought to be about 100 feet high), with four altars at its cardinal points. When I reached the dagoba several macaque monkeys were sitting on the eastern altar eating the bright pink-purple lotus flowers deposited there by pilgrims. Most scattered at my approach but one or two remained, carefully eating the yellow center of the big flowers. It was amusing to see them stuffing their faces into the big flowers.
The altars have some interesting sculpture remaining on them, which I looked over before exploring the wonderful assemblage of boulders and caves around the dagoba. There are supposed to be 68 caves. I found some bats in one of them and really enjoyed wandering through the rocky and forested area.
I walked down the narrow stairs I had walked up earlier and then further up the wide ones, past more frangipani trees, to the ruins of the main monastery. An alms' hall has another one of those enormous stone troughs for rice for the monks, plus another smaller, though still large, one nearby. The remains of an aqueduct that brought water can also be seen. Next door are the ruins of the chapter house with two large stone tablets from the 10th century setting forth the duties and the pay of various officials and employees at the monastery. Parts are translated and very interesting.
From there I walked further up, maybe 400 feet higher than where I had started in the morning, to a terrace where I had to take off my shoes and hat. Here there is a small restored white dagoba supposedly marking the spot where in 247 B.C. King Devanampiya Tissa, while hunting a deer, encountered Mahinda, the son of the great Buddhist Emperor Ashoka, who promptly converted him and his retinue of 40,000 to Buddhism. At least that is the story. A modern statue of the king stands in front of the dagoba, with the dagoba meant to represent Mahinda.
Next to the dagoba is a gold roofed pavilion over what I think are a set of Buddha footprints that were covered with coins thrown on them by pilgrims. A gold and a steel railing surround the footprints. A sign nearby listed the benefactors of the fencing and roof, including a husband and wife and the "Lifebuoy brand of Sri Lanka Unilever."
I wandered around the area, a sort of large terrace with rocky hills looming above it. A bodhi tree stands on one side. By now there were lots of pilgrims around. I climbed one of the hills, a steep rocky outcrop with metal rails and stone cut stairs on the way to the top. Lots of people were coming up and down the precarious route and I followed an old, gray haired woman in a colorful sari as she made her way to the top. The top was windy and crowded with people, with only a few square feet of space for them enclosed by thin, low metal rails. The views are spectacular, over the distant countryside and down to the white dagoba below. Also, at more or less the same level are the summits of two other rocky hills overlooking the terrace, one with a huge modern white Buddha statue and one with a a brightly white painted dagoba much larger than the one below.
I stood up there in the wind enjoying the views as pilgrims came and went. At times there were traffic jams of pilgrims, many of them white uniformed schoolkids, on the narrow path up. Four old ladies came up together, one of them passing out cough drops to the other four and me. (I read the label, with a depiction of a man coughing into a handkerchief, and they contained extract of clotsfoot and tincture of tolu, among other ingredients.) I asked her if the others were her sisters, as one of them looked very much like her, and she said, "Sisters [and pointing to one] and mother." They all posed for me for a group photo and then made their way down.
I finally battled my way down through the crowds along the precarious and narrow route, and then walked up some much easier rock cut stairs to the big white dagoba. I spent quite a while up there as the views were great. I could see some of the dagobas in Anuradhapura There were all sorts of macaque monkeys around, many with their babies clinging to their undersides. Whenever the opportunity arose, they made for the pink-purple lotus flowers left by pilgrims to devour their yellow centers. They were quite bold and fun to watch.
I walked down to the terrace and then up to the modern Buddha statue, with more great views. There were still lots of pilgrims, most of them white clad, when I started heading down just after 4. I took a different path down, passing a rock cut pool with a carving of a five headed cobra, some more ruins further down in a beautiful forested area, and even further down a small pool with the eroded remains of a lion on his hind feet. Apparently, water once flowed from his mouth.
I finally reached the road and started walking to the bus stop for the bus back to Anuradhapura. On the way I passed some restored small brick dagobas. At one of them pilgrims were lighting some sort of flammable waxy looking substance on top of a coconut and then carrying the lighted coconut around the stupa. After two or three rounds they would break the coconut over a rock just outside the dagoba enclosure. One little boy had a hard time breaking his. It took him three tries to break it sufficiently, while a woman who looked to be his grandmother watched. I've read it is bad luck not to break your coconut. I caught a bus back to Anuradhapura about 6:30.
The next day was a full moon day, the Esala Poya, with a multi-elephant perahera scheduled for that night. Anuradhapura is always a big draw for pilgrims and especially so on full moon, or poya, days. Before 10 I took a bus heading northwest about 25 or 30 miles to the archeological site of Tantirimalai. As the bus passed through the ruins of Anuiradhapura I saw hundreds of buses and vans, having brought pilgrims, parked along the sides of the roads. The road through the forested country to Tantirimalai was also full of pilgrim buses and vans.
The bus reached Tantirimalai after a journey of about an hour and a quarter and it was not the remote and little visited site described by one of my guidebooks. Tantirimalai is a large undulating rock outcrop and on this poya day was full of white clad pilgrims, most walking and running around barefoot. (Another tourist had been there a few days earlier and had told me it was almost deserted on that day.) Dozens of buses and vans were parked along the road. I kept my sandals on as I roamed the rocky expanse for about two hours. The day was mostly cloudy and the wind was blowing strongly, so it wasn't as hot as it could be on that massive expanse of rock.
Tantirimalai marks a spot where Mahinda's sister rested while delivering to the newly converted king in Anuradhapura the sapling of the bodhi tree in India under which Buddha was enlightened. Two large Buddhas are carved into the rock at different places. A sitting, meditating Buddha is flanked by gods fanning him. An even larger Buddha reclines. Both are impressive, though the latter less so when you approach and see that most of his face has been restored with cement. A modern white dagoba sits on one summit and a bodhi tree in an enclosure on another. Across a long pool of water created among the rocks by a little dam are some ruins among more rocks. In one narrow defile between the rocks is a sort of mini forest, through which a path runs to a rock overhang with prehistoric painting on it. Next to it is as sign with a hilarious map showing prehistoric rock paintings around the world, locating Paris in northern Africa.
I wandered around some more, climbed some of the rocky summits for the views over the rocky area and the green countryside beyond, and then made my way back to the entrance. A long line of pilgrims led into an enclosure where free food was being dispensed. I jumped on a bus about 1:30, which quickly became very crowded, and got back to Anuradhapura about 3. I showered, rested, and had dinner before heading to the perahera route about 9:30, reaching a spot where a crowd, including lots of foreigners, had formed about 10, when the perahera was supposed to pass by. I waited for an hour with no perahera and no sign of the perahera coming. I gave up and walked back to my guesthouse, took another shower, and went to bed just before midnight. I was later by another tourist that the perahera finally arrived about 11:30 and that it was still in full swing an hour later when she left.
Once over the lagoon the bus headed south on a road that more or less paralleled the coast (Palk Bay), but we never saw it. The dry terrain consisted mainly of sparse yellow grass and shrubs, with palmyra palms, but one section was a sort of dry forest with some lovely trees and dense underbrush. There were a few army camps along the way, and few houses and towns.
Mannar is a long, thin island about 20 miles long with its southeast end just off the coast. After traveling more than three hours we reached the causeway and later bridge that reaches the island. I spotted some black headed ibises searching for food in the shallow water as we crossed the causeway. The town of Mannar is just over the bridge with a mostly ruined fort just to the north of the bridge as you reach the island. The bus arrived about 3:30 on a cloudy afternoon and I found a very nice little guesthouse for only 1000 rupees, less than $8, the cheapest I've paid here in Sri Lanka.
I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around town, passing a cricket match in a dusty pitch and then walking along the town's main street and eventually on a road to a baobab tree, native to Africa, on the outskirts of town. There are lots of churches in town, and I've read that the island is 40% Catholic. The Muslims were driven out by the Tamil Tigers, but some have obviously returned, judging by the dress I saw on some of the women and men. Mannar is in the Tamil part of the country.
The baobab tree is enormous and, unlike most of the baobab trees I have seen in Africa, was in full bloom with its gnarly branches covered with leaves. Among the leaves were pale red flowers and small fruit. Often these trees are leafless and look like they have been planted upside down, with their roots sticking up in the air. A sign next to the tree said its circumference is 19.51 meters (how's that for precision? not 19.5 but 19.51), about 64 feet, and its height 7.5 meters, almost 25 feet. So its trunk is almost as wide as the tree is high. The sign also said it was "planted by Arabian sailors in or around 1477." I wonder how they arrived at that date. There was some graffiti on the elephant hide like bark.
From the baobab tree I walked back to the bridge that connects the island to the causeway. A sign said it was built by the Japanese in 2010 and is about 500 feet long. The remains of the partially destroyed old bridge run alongside. I've read that the old bridge was blown up in 1990 during the civil war, cutting off the island for seven years, so there must have been another bridge from 1997 to 2010. With the wind blowing strongly and the sky cloudy it was cool on the bridge at the end of the afternoon, with good views of the fort and lagoon. I stayed there until after sunset.
The next morning I walked to the bridge and then the fort. The morning was cloudy at first, but then the sun came out while I was exploring the fort. Mannar was taken by the Portuguese from Jaffna in the 16th century because of the pearl banks just south of it. (Apparently there is a Bizet opera entitled The Pearl Fishers set in Mannar.) As late as 1905 there were 5000 pearl divers recovering 80 million oysters a year, but now the industry is dead.
The Portuguese built the fort and the Dutch expanded it. I spent a couple of hours exploring it. When I entered several little donkeys were grazing on the yellow grass. One was a furry little newborn. The adult donkeys are small, only about three feet tall at the shoulder. Mannar was the first place I saw donkeys in Sri Lanka. I had seen several along the streets of downtown Mannar the afternoon before. They don't seem to be used for anything.
Among the ruins is one building that was a church. Inside is the stone top of a Portuguese tomb dating from the 1570's. There are several stone Dutch grave markers on the floor, the earliest from 1697 and the others from the 1700's. An English plaque memorializing a father and mother is on the wall. Palmyra and coconut palms grow among the ruins in the square fort, with bastions at the four corners. Lots of fallen purplish palmyra fruit lay all around.
I wandered through the many ruined buildings and then walked along the walls. There were many crows flying about, some with pieces of grass in their beaks for building nests. As I walked along the walls near some palmyra palms, a crow hit me in the back of the head. I must have been to close to its nest. A little later on another did the same thing and others flew close to me, hovering overhead. I took to running along the walls waving my arms when I got close to trees and managed to avoid further attacks.
After lunch I hopped onto a bus destined for Thalaimannar, the town at Mannar Island's far northwest end, 20 miles away. I sat on it for about an hour before it finally left shortly after 1, taking about an hour to reach Thalaimannar. En route there were some views of Palk Bay to the north and I saw a few baobab trees also, one that seemed to be hollowed out. I saw a lot more palmyra palms in the sandy soil. A few donkeys grazed along the road, but more cows and goats. We passed through two little towns and followed the newly renovated railroad tracks. Just before reaching Thalaimannar the bus turned off the main road to pass by the brand new train station near the jetty where the ferry to Rameswaram in India used to depart. I wonder if there are plans to resume the ferry, as I can't think of any other reason to rebuild the train tracks to the jetty.
Thalaimannar seems to be more of a village than a town. I walked five or ten minutes north and reached the coast, which I walked along for about half a mile to the west. The road ended at a rudimentary navy base which I wasn't allowed to enter. I did walk from the road across the scrub and then through some very short mangroves, at most a foot high, to reach the beach. Running the 20 miles or so from the tip of Mannar to India is Adam's Bridge, a series of sandbanks and islets. The name comes from the theory that when Adam was expelled from Paradise, in Sri Lanka, he traveled across this "bridge." It was in fact an isthmus connecting India and Sri Lanka when the seas were lower. In the Ramayana this is the route Hanuman and later Rama take to reach Lanka, slay its demon king Ravana, and rescue Sita. I had hoped to see something, perhaps some of the islets. I could see the coast of Mannar to the west and maybe one islet off the coast.
I walked back to Thalaimannar, arriving about 3:30 after being barked at by five puppies hiding in the thicket of thorn bushes along the way. Rather than wait for the bus I walked along the road south through a sort of palmyra forest. The sky had clouded up so it was now cooler and the spiky palmyra trees were very interesting to see up close. The bus came by after 4, sooner than I would have preferred, as I was enjoying the walk. An hour later I was back in the town of Mannar and again walked out to the bridge and later to the fort before sunset. The sky was cloudy but there was a bit of color at sunset.
It was hot and sunny the next morning at 10:30 when I left on a bus heading southeast to Anuradhapura, 70 miles and two and a half hours away. My bus had paintings of St. Francis holding the baby Jesus, or some baby, plus another of the full grown Jesus, at the front. Before we left I spotted another bus with a large painting of a ferocious looking eagle on the side, with a small portrait of Jesus on the door above the words "Don't Be Afraid." After crossing the bridge and causeway and reaching the mainland, the bus stopped at a small roadside shrine with a statue of St. Francis. One guy from the bus, not the driver or the ticket conductor, hopped off, removed his sandals, and prayed before the statue while we waited. He finished, hopped back on board the bus, and off we went.
The first hour or so of the trip was on a poor road, with lots of the culverts en route being rebuilt. After that first hour, the new road was smooth and much faster. We followed the recently rebuilt railroad tracks through scrub and sandy soil at first, with thicker forest and taller trees the further we went inland. Nearing Anuradhapura the forest seemed quite thick, though this is a dry area, with rain only from about October to December. We reached Anuradhapura about 1 and I found a very nice place to stay, sort of a homestay in a family home with several rooms for tourists.
For more than a thousand years Anuradhapura was the dominant city in Sri Lanka and for much of that time one of the most magnificent cities in the world. The chronicles say it was founded in the 4th century B.C., but it may have existed earlier. In the 3rd century its king and his followers were converted to Buddhism, supposedly by the son of the great Indian Buddhist Emperor Ashoka. The city's prosperity was based on the building and maintenance of great reservoirs, or tanks, that provided water for agriculture during the long dry seasons. The water system was quite elaborate and allowed the kingdom to produce enough rice and other crops to support armies and massive building projects. However, the city was often conquered and plundered by Tamil kingdoms in India, or even taken over by Tamil generals in its own armies. Its final destruction came in 993 after it was conquered by the great Chola king Rajaraja I, who established a Tamil kingdom with its capital in Polonnaruwa. Still, when a Sinhalese king finally conquered Polonnaruwa in 1056, he chose to be crowned in Anuradhapura, though he made his capital in Polonnaruwa. At the end of the 13th century, as Polonnaruwa fell and was abandoned as the Sinhalese moved south, Anuradhapura, too, was abandoned (except, apparently, by a few monks) until rediscovered by the British in the 19th century.
The ruins at Anuradhapura are extensive and the greedy government charges foreigners $25 to see them, with the ticket good for only one day. However, unlike at Polonnaruwa, the ruins are not fenced in and are so extensive that there are not ticket checkers everywhere. About 3 I took a bike from my guest house and biked to the southern area of the ruins. The ruins generally are west of the new town established by the British in the 19th century and now with about 70,000 people. To get to them I had to bike only two or three miles, first along city streets and then through the countryside of rice paddies. The town has three tanks, two to the west and one to the east. I headed towards the Mirisavatiya Dagoba between the two western tanks and, along with another tourist on a bike I met while looking for it, finally found it. Almost all the signs along the way are in Sinhalese, with few in English. Anuradhapura is a major pilgrimage site for Sri Lankan Buddhists, second only to the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy.
The dagoba (stupa) is fully restored, or rather rebuilt, and is painted bright white. Its first version dates from the 2nd century B.C., built by Sri Lanka's most admired king, Dutugemunu, after he conquered the city, completing his conquest of the island. It was rebuilt over the centuries and before its most recent restoration resembled a weed and tree covered hill, like all of Anuradhapura's dagobas.
South of the dagoba, along the eastern edge of one of the tanks are some ruins in what was a royal pleasure garden. One of the pools in the gardens has several wonderfully carved bas reliefs on the stone outcrops next to it of what look to be very happy elephants playing among lotuses in the water. The area was very nice, filled with trees, and we were the only people there.
South of that is a temple with more elephant bas reliefs around its much larger pool, though the bas reliefs of the elephants are not as fine as in the gardens. A small museum contains some other very fine sculpture and a modern reclining and very colorful Buddha lies in a building with swallow nests in one dark corner. As I was examining the nests, a swallow flew right past me and into a nest. I saw its small head pop out of the nest several times just a few feet from me. Next to this building is a cleft in the rocks filled with thousands of small bats clustered all over each other. We climbed up to the top of the rocks, with views of the dagobas to the north, rice paddies to the east, and the tank to the west, over which the sun was setting. We had to walk back through the gardens to get our bikes. A couple of langur monkeys were sitting on stones in the gardens eating hard green mangoes. I got back to my guest house just before dark and had a very good dinner there.
The next morning, after a good breakfast with eggs, toast, fruit, and tea, I headed back to the ruins on my bike about 8:30. Besides the southern ruins that I had visited the day before, there are four major sets of ruins, including the ancient citadel and three monasteries. Each area covers many acres. Two monasteries are south of what was the walled citadel and I headed to the earliest of the two, the Mahavihara, founded in the 3rd century around the bodhi tree that grew from a sapling from the bodhi tree under which Buddha obtained enlightenment in Bodhgaya in India, the sapling having been brought to Anuradhapura by Ashoka's daughter. At least that is the story.
Passing an army camp near a lotus filled pond and then along the shores of the northernmost of the two western tanks, I headed first to the gleaming white, fully restored and rebuilt Ruvanvalisaya Dagoba. It is a big one, about 180 feet high, but only the third biggest in Anuradhapura. It is, however, the most important religiously, as it is believed to hold several relics of Buddha. Just in front of the entrance is a big sign with photos of the dagoba before (1890) and after restoration. In the 1890 photo it looks like a big mound covered in trees and bushes, with a few stone pillars in front of it. The pillars are still there, but everything else now is vastly changed. Shoeless and hatless, as required, with lots of pilgrims mostly clad in white, I wandered around the big courtyard on all sides of the dagoba. The glare from the big white dagoba was almost too much. A small procession came by, with a couple of umbrellas over some of the marchers and two drummers and one guy with a small oboe.
Donning my hat and sandals again, I walked south along the pedestrian path towards the bodhi tree, passing lots of garbage littering the grounds under the trees. Anuradhapura gets hordes of pilgrims and they mostly just throw their trash wherever they want. Just before reaching the bodhi tree I passed the remains of a 2nd century building that is said to have been nine stories high with a thousand rooms. Only a forest of stone columns remains, some 1600 of them, it is said. They are all fenced off.
By the time I reached the bodhi tree it was about 11. The tree is second only to the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy as the most highly prized site for pilgrims and I've been told there are big crowds early in the morning. It wasn't very crowded when I arrived. The complex, which is entered after a police check, has four levels of terraces with golden railings, the top two closed off to the public. On the top terrace is the original bodhi tree brought from Bodhgaya, supposedly planted there over 2200 years ago. On lower terraces are several more bodhi trees, all said to have been grown from saplings from the original. The bodhi tree in Bodhgaya was destroyed soon after its sapling reached Anuradhapura and the one there now was grown from a sapling brought from Anuradhapura.
The bodhi tree on top is not particularly impressive, and does not seem so very old. One limb is held up by golden poles. On the highest terrace that you can climb to (the third highest) are several altars, and pilgrims were depositing flowers, usually lotuses, on them and then praying. Many people were sitting on the sandy ground and praying, or just sitting. Colorful Buddhist prayer flags hung from the railings and elsewhere. Some of the pilgrims handed some sort of folded fabric to an attendant standing on stairs leading to the second highest terrace. When he had a large enough stack of them he took them up to the second highest terrace and deposited them along the railing of the highest terrace. I wandered around for an hour or so watching all the activity.
I walked back to my bike, which I had left near the big dagoba. Before reaching it I stopped at a ruined little brick dagoba under some beautiful rain trees to drink some water and eat some cookies. It was midday and hot. The trees were full of birds, and monkeys, both langurs and macaques, were in the trees and on the ground. A guy with a large and colorful cobra in a basket displayed it for tourists. From where I sat I had a good view to the east through the trees of the massive brick Jetavana Dagoba, Anuradhapura's and the world's largest.
I biked to get a better view of the Jetavana Dagoba and then turned around and headed to the Thuparama Dagoba, dating from the 3rd century B.C. and the earliest one in Anuradhapura. It is relatively small, only about 65 feet high, and fully restored and rebuilt and painted a bright white. It is a pretty little dagoba, surrounded by four concentric rows of stone pillars of diminishing height, most still topped with capitals decorated with eroded geese. Not all the pillars are still standing, and several lean. It is thought that perhaps they supported a roof over the dagoba. The place was full of glare at 2 in the afternoon. The stone courtyard all around it was now too hot for bare feet. I put on a pair of black socks I had brought with me.
From the dagoba, with my sandals back on (and my socks off), I walked to some more ruins of monastery buildings, usually just foundations with lots of stone pillars. One had an excellent moonstone at the entrance, with more wonderful carvings on the balustrades along the stairs into the building.
I next biked east to the ruins of the Jetavana Monastery east of the Mahavihara Monastery. This was the newest monastery, founded in the 3rd century A.D. by a king having a dispute with the Mahavihara Monastery. I managed to get by the ticket checkers at the south side of the monastery by entering it over a small bridge on the west. Its centerpiece is the huge Jetavana Dagoba, unpainted but restored in brick and standing about 240 feet high. Originally it is supposed to have been 400 feet high, and when built was the third highest building in the world, after the two highest pyramids at Giza in Egypt. I approached it walking past the foundations of monastery buildings, including one ruined building with the remains of a stone door jam more than 25 feet high. It is thought to have been an image house holding a large standing Buddha. Under the cracked lotus plinth inside a latticed stone tray, with 20 or so cubicles for relics, is visible.
I reached the huge dagoba and walked around the big stone platform surrounding it. I wore my socks to protect my tender feet from the hot stone. Few others were there. The dagoba is still the largest and tallest structure in the world made entirely out of bricks, an estimated 90 million of them. Originally it took a quarter century to build. The reconstruction was finished in 1981. The bulbous lower portion is topped by a cube with a broken brick spire atop the cube.
I wandered through the ruins, mostly foundations, south of the dagoba. There are also quite a few stone pillars, particularly at what was the chapter house, a well preserved stone pool, and an unusual stone latticed railing around what might have been a bodhi tree or an image house. A big langur monkey was sitting on the rail as I approached. Several others were around and I watched them for a while. About 6 I started biking back to my guest house, which took about 20 minutes.
The next morning I left by bike from my guest house a little after 8, heading to the ruins of the Abhayagiri Monastery, the most northerly, north of the citadel. It was founded in the 1st century B.C. and soon surpassed Mahavihara as the largest and most influential monastery. In the 5th century A.D. it had 5000 monks and was more open to new currents of Buddhist thought than the more conservative Mahavihara Monastery. Lots of foreigners came to study there, including the famous Chinese traveler Fa Hsien, or Fa Xian, in the early 5th century, about 1411-12.
On the way ticket checkers at two stops yelled for me to stop but I just biked past smiling and waving and saying something incomprehensible. I biked through the east side of the monastery and beyond it for a couple of miles to the remains of a stone bridge over a little stream. It is made of big slabs of rectangular stone. The people along the way were friendly and I think a little surprised to see me.
I biked back to the monastery and then along a dirt road well before the ticket checkers. I spotted the ruins of an old pool, with a jumble of rectangular cut stone that formerly lined the walls. Through the trees I biked to the east side of the giant Abhayagiri Dagoba, parked my bike, and then walked around the large stone platform surrounding it. At about 10 it was early enough in the morning that I didn't have to wear my socks. The dagoba supposedly marks a spot where Buddha left a footprint, standing with one foot there and the other one on Adam's Peak. The original dagoba dates from the 1st century B.C., but was enlarged in the 2nd century A.D., rising to about 380 feet in height, only slightly shorter than the Jetavana Dagoba. Until just a few years ago it was under restoration, with workers tearing off the trees and bushes and adding new bricks. Around the dagoba are many little hillocks, only a few feet high, with trees growing on top. I wonder if they are overgrown little stupas.
At the southern and main entrance to the platform on which the dagoba sits are two little shrines with ancient statues of fat dwarfish attendants of Kubera, the god of wealth, which stand guard at the dagoba. The statues are now in modern little buildings.
From the dagoba I biked west into an area full of ruins, again mostly foundations, of the monks quarters, a very pretty area, quiet and sheltered by many trees. There is much less garbage on the Abhayagiri Monastery grounds, and fewer pilgrims come up here. Lots of monkeys were around. One building among these ruins is thought to be where the Tooth Relic was kept. Nearby is a large stone pool full of water with swirling patterns of bright green algae on top. Further along is the monks' refectory with a huge stone trough used to hold rice donated to the monks, probably enough for all 5000 of them. Along the way are a couple of statues of the meditating Buddha. Finally I reached a huge stone pool, called the Elephant Pool because of its size, 530 by 175 feet, and 100 feet deep.
From there I headed north to see some other ruins with well preserved moonstones and guardstones and had the bad luck to park my bike right next to a ticket checker. I acted dumb, asked where I could buy a ticket, and biked off the way I had come. I biked past the Elephant Pool again and then further south and then east to the brightly white painted Lankarama Dagoba, a relatively small one dating from the 1st century B.C. and thought to be part of a nunnery. It has been overly modernized, so I soon headed further east and entered the former citadel from the north. Almost nothing remains. The western walls are now only a long dirt mound. There are a few houses and shops along the road through the citadel. I biked to the ruins of a royal palace near the southern entry. It is a small one, and a late one, built for the coronation of the king who recaptured Polonnaruwa from the Tamils in the 11th century. Not much remains. There are some more ruins further north, including what may have the very first Temple of the Tooth. The ruins of a refectory had another of those huge rice troughs.
The day had been cloudier than the previous ones, with more wind, which was welcome. About 4 I biked south out of the citadel and back to the Jetavana Monastery, crossing into it over the little bridge I had used the day before. For the rest of the afternoon I just wandered around among the ruins and trees watching the dozens of monkeys, both langurs and macaques. About 6 I started biking back to my guest house, a little bit more difficult in the wind on well used bicycle. Just once while traveling it would be nice to be able to ride a decent bicycle.
The next morning was cloudy and windy as I set off on my bike about 8:30 heading back to the ruins of the Abhayagiri Monastery, about a half hour ride away. I finally bought the $25 one day ticket and then biked first to the ruins of the monastery's chapter house west of the giant dagoba. The ruins of what once was a five story building aren't much, but the entrance steps have a very finely carved guardstone, with the usual nagaraja figure standing next to a dwarf and with a multi-headed cobra hovering over him. Nearby are a couple of other ruined buildings with excellent moonstones, the half moon shaped stones in front of entry stairs. These two both contains all four animals, elephants, bulls, lions, and horses, plus lotuses, foliage, and a row of geese. Some later moonstones, which were meant to be stepped on just before entering a building, omit bulls, in deference to Hindus as a bull is Shiva's sacred animal, and lions, as they are symbols of Sinhalese royalty. I wandered around the quiet, forested area, with several ruins of stone pillars, many leaning haphazardly. A cave with a rudimentary brick structure and very old inscriptions on the rocks is nearby.
I then biked to an area east of the giant dagoba to two very large and well preserved stone pools next to each other, used for the monks' ritual bathing. Water came in through a stone conduit to a small pool with several levels right beside the smaller of the two large pools. Here the silt would settle before the water flowed into the smaller of the two large pools, and then from that pool into the larger one. Between the pools and the dagoba is a pretty forested area with several ruins, mostly just restored foundations, plus a very fine Buddha statue in the meditation pose.
By now it was about noon and I sat under the trees and ate some cookies I had brought with me. I was soon joined by a couple of macaque monkeys and their very small babies clinging to their undersides. I did throw them bits of my cookies.
About 1 I biked to the nearby Abhayagiri Museum in a modern building and after that I biked further south to the Jetavana Museum in an old colonial building on the southern edge of the Jetavana Monastery ruins. Both museums had some interesting sculpture and other items. The latter had photos of the six main dagobas before and after restoration. The Abhayagiri, Jetavana, Ruvanvalisaya, and Mirisavatiya dagobas were completely covered with trees and bushes, looking like oddly shaped hills. The smaller Thuparama and Lankarama dagobas also had trees and bushes growing on them, but with some of the brick facing still visible.
After visiting the Jetavana Museum, I wandered around the ruins of the monastery again and sat for a while and ate some more cookies. Then I biked to the nearby Ruvanvalisaya Dagoba where I spotted an elephant chained to trees and munching some palm fronds and other foliage provided for him. I watched him for a while and then explored some ruins just west of the dagoba, a couple with moonstones much simpler than the usual ones, the row of animals consisting of only nine of them, three elephants and two each of horses, lions, and bulls.
I biked further south to the ruins of a refectory near the Mirisavatiya Dagoba, with another one of those long stone troughs for rice donated for the monks. From there I biked further south, back to the royal pleasure gardens I had visited my first afternoon in Anuradhapura to see again the wonderful elephant bas reliefs carved into the stone outcrops next to pools.
From there I biked still further south to stone outcrops that formed the core of yet another monastery, the Vessagiriya Monastery, of which almost nothing remains. However, I enjoyed climbing up and around the giant boulders for views of the countryside, full of trees and rice paddies. I could see the white Mirisavatiya Dagoba and, further away, the bigger red brick Jetavana Dagoba in the distance. While clambering among the boulders, some bigger than houses and seemingly balanced precariously on the stone outcrop, I came across a white clad, white bearded old man meditating under one of the biggest boulders. I wandered around the area as long as I could and then biked back to my hotel, getting there just before dark.
The next morning about 9 I took a bus only about 8 miles east, but a slow, crowded bus ride of almost an hour, to Mihintale, a rocky hill famous as the place where Buddhism was introduced to Sri Lanka. At the foot of the hill ancient stone stairs, very wide, lead up past frangipani trees in flower. About a hundred feet up I took a side set of narrower stairs another hundred feet up to the Kantaka Chetiya Dagoba. The dagoba is only about 40 feet high (originally thought to be about 100 feet high), with four altars at its cardinal points. When I reached the dagoba several macaque monkeys were sitting on the eastern altar eating the bright pink-purple lotus flowers deposited there by pilgrims. Most scattered at my approach but one or two remained, carefully eating the yellow center of the big flowers. It was amusing to see them stuffing their faces into the big flowers.
The altars have some interesting sculpture remaining on them, which I looked over before exploring the wonderful assemblage of boulders and caves around the dagoba. There are supposed to be 68 caves. I found some bats in one of them and really enjoyed wandering through the rocky and forested area.
I walked down the narrow stairs I had walked up earlier and then further up the wide ones, past more frangipani trees, to the ruins of the main monastery. An alms' hall has another one of those enormous stone troughs for rice for the monks, plus another smaller, though still large, one nearby. The remains of an aqueduct that brought water can also be seen. Next door are the ruins of the chapter house with two large stone tablets from the 10th century setting forth the duties and the pay of various officials and employees at the monastery. Parts are translated and very interesting.
From there I walked further up, maybe 400 feet higher than where I had started in the morning, to a terrace where I had to take off my shoes and hat. Here there is a small restored white dagoba supposedly marking the spot where in 247 B.C. King Devanampiya Tissa, while hunting a deer, encountered Mahinda, the son of the great Buddhist Emperor Ashoka, who promptly converted him and his retinue of 40,000 to Buddhism. At least that is the story. A modern statue of the king stands in front of the dagoba, with the dagoba meant to represent Mahinda.
Next to the dagoba is a gold roofed pavilion over what I think are a set of Buddha footprints that were covered with coins thrown on them by pilgrims. A gold and a steel railing surround the footprints. A sign nearby listed the benefactors of the fencing and roof, including a husband and wife and the "Lifebuoy brand of Sri Lanka Unilever."
I wandered around the area, a sort of large terrace with rocky hills looming above it. A bodhi tree stands on one side. By now there were lots of pilgrims around. I climbed one of the hills, a steep rocky outcrop with metal rails and stone cut stairs on the way to the top. Lots of people were coming up and down the precarious route and I followed an old, gray haired woman in a colorful sari as she made her way to the top. The top was windy and crowded with people, with only a few square feet of space for them enclosed by thin, low metal rails. The views are spectacular, over the distant countryside and down to the white dagoba below. Also, at more or less the same level are the summits of two other rocky hills overlooking the terrace, one with a huge modern white Buddha statue and one with a a brightly white painted dagoba much larger than the one below.
I stood up there in the wind enjoying the views as pilgrims came and went. At times there were traffic jams of pilgrims, many of them white uniformed schoolkids, on the narrow path up. Four old ladies came up together, one of them passing out cough drops to the other four and me. (I read the label, with a depiction of a man coughing into a handkerchief, and they contained extract of clotsfoot and tincture of tolu, among other ingredients.) I asked her if the others were her sisters, as one of them looked very much like her, and she said, "Sisters [and pointing to one] and mother." They all posed for me for a group photo and then made their way down.
I finally battled my way down through the crowds along the precarious and narrow route, and then walked up some much easier rock cut stairs to the big white dagoba. I spent quite a while up there as the views were great. I could see some of the dagobas in Anuradhapura There were all sorts of macaque monkeys around, many with their babies clinging to their undersides. Whenever the opportunity arose, they made for the pink-purple lotus flowers left by pilgrims to devour their yellow centers. They were quite bold and fun to watch.
I walked down to the terrace and then up to the modern Buddha statue, with more great views. There were still lots of pilgrims, most of them white clad, when I started heading down just after 4. I took a different path down, passing a rock cut pool with a carving of a five headed cobra, some more ruins further down in a beautiful forested area, and even further down a small pool with the eroded remains of a lion on his hind feet. Apparently, water once flowed from his mouth.
I finally reached the road and started walking to the bus stop for the bus back to Anuradhapura. On the way I passed some restored small brick dagobas. At one of them pilgrims were lighting some sort of flammable waxy looking substance on top of a coconut and then carrying the lighted coconut around the stupa. After two or three rounds they would break the coconut over a rock just outside the dagoba enclosure. One little boy had a hard time breaking his. It took him three tries to break it sufficiently, while a woman who looked to be his grandmother watched. I've read it is bad luck not to break your coconut. I caught a bus back to Anuradhapura about 6:30.
The next day was a full moon day, the Esala Poya, with a multi-elephant perahera scheduled for that night. Anuradhapura is always a big draw for pilgrims and especially so on full moon, or poya, days. Before 10 I took a bus heading northwest about 25 or 30 miles to the archeological site of Tantirimalai. As the bus passed through the ruins of Anuiradhapura I saw hundreds of buses and vans, having brought pilgrims, parked along the sides of the roads. The road through the forested country to Tantirimalai was also full of pilgrim buses and vans.
The bus reached Tantirimalai after a journey of about an hour and a quarter and it was not the remote and little visited site described by one of my guidebooks. Tantirimalai is a large undulating rock outcrop and on this poya day was full of white clad pilgrims, most walking and running around barefoot. (Another tourist had been there a few days earlier and had told me it was almost deserted on that day.) Dozens of buses and vans were parked along the road. I kept my sandals on as I roamed the rocky expanse for about two hours. The day was mostly cloudy and the wind was blowing strongly, so it wasn't as hot as it could be on that massive expanse of rock.
Tantirimalai marks a spot where Mahinda's sister rested while delivering to the newly converted king in Anuradhapura the sapling of the bodhi tree in India under which Buddha was enlightened. Two large Buddhas are carved into the rock at different places. A sitting, meditating Buddha is flanked by gods fanning him. An even larger Buddha reclines. Both are impressive, though the latter less so when you approach and see that most of his face has been restored with cement. A modern white dagoba sits on one summit and a bodhi tree in an enclosure on another. Across a long pool of water created among the rocks by a little dam are some ruins among more rocks. In one narrow defile between the rocks is a sort of mini forest, through which a path runs to a rock overhang with prehistoric painting on it. Next to it is as sign with a hilarious map showing prehistoric rock paintings around the world, locating Paris in northern Africa.
I wandered around some more, climbed some of the rocky summits for the views over the rocky area and the green countryside beyond, and then made my way back to the entrance. A long line of pilgrims led into an enclosure where free food was being dispensed. I jumped on a bus about 1:30, which quickly became very crowded, and got back to Anuradhapura about 3. I showered, rested, and had dinner before heading to the perahera route about 9:30, reaching a spot where a crowd, including lots of foreigners, had formed about 10, when the perahera was supposed to pass by. I waited for an hour with no perahera and no sign of the perahera coming. I gave up and walked back to my guesthouse, took another shower, and went to bed just before midnight. I was later by another tourist that the perahera finally arrived about 11:30 and that it was still in full swing an hour later when she left.
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