Robin & Karen Living the Dream: The Dagobas of Anuradhapura

We arrived to the Ancient City of Anuradhapura on February 18/26 & settled into our hotel - David Villa. We took the family room with kitchen as it was well rated & that’s what was available - $94 for 3 nights. More stairs, 3 rd floor, keeping us fitter doing so many places with stairs! The absolute best feature of this hotel was the balcony overlooking some buildings & many trees where we were entertained by frolicking toque macaque monkeys, 2 types of hornbills, parakeets, black headed ibis, squirrels & many birds flying overhead.

Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba

Malabar pied hornbill

David Villa

Kitchenette

Our balcony

Toque macaque

Black headed ibis

Egret

Hornbill

Out to explore, found a large grocery store, wine/ alcohol store & a restaurant that our host recommended - Rangiri. The Sri Lankan people eat with their fingers & Robin has taken to doing this as well - says the food tastes better.

Rice & curries

The bottles of coke are only 175 mls!

Squat toilets on display at a plumbing store

Lots of booths selling lottery tickets

Mud house

Looking thru the window of the wine store, no entry allowed

We agreed to have our host, David, take us on a Tuk Tuk tour of the Ancient City so we were off the next morning in his red Tuk Tuk. Anuradhapura became Sri Lanka’s first capital city in 380 BCE & soon after Buddhism reached Sri Lanka.

Our first stop was the Jetavanarama Dagoba, dating from the 3rd century, we toured the museum first, lots of interesting artifacts. And then we went outside & were speechless upon sighting the Dagoba! When it was built, entirely of bricks, (over 90 million), it was the 3rd tallest monument in the world, after the Egyptian pyramids - today it stands at 70 m. but it may have been 120m. It was abandoned & overtaken by jungle & later restored. All around it are the ruins of a monastery that housed 3000 monks. Breathtaking in its size! We wore white to be respectful & walked around the diameter of the structure clockwise, in bare feet. Our shoes generally stayed in the tuk tuk as they are not permitted on the grounds so our feet took a bit of a beating by days end. Thankfully the stones & gravel paths were not too hot.

Jetavanarama Dagobs

And to visit any temple site you also must cover your knees & shoulders, Robin got a few strange looks wearing my beach wrap as a sarong!

We did a brief stop at the Twin Baths, Kuttam Pokuna, that used a sophisticated water filtration system keeping the water fresh for bathing for ?Kings or monks.

Another massive brick Dagoba - Abhayagiri Dagoba, dating back to the 1sr century, over 2000 years old! It had been abandoned for 800 years until it was rediscovered in the 1880’s, covered with trees. It under went a 15 year restoration. It was the ceremonial focus of a 5000 monk monastery. The base surrounding these huge structures was constructed of massive stone blocks, worn by time but still intact. Many shrines around the dagobas where the worshippers laid offerings of flowers, food, baskets of medicinal herbs, statues of Buddha & robes & other supplies needed by the monks. We saw macaque monkeys, black faced langurs & peacocks on the grounds but few tourists.

Black faced langurs

Toque macaque

Peacock in a tree

Showing it before & after reclamation

The busiest temple with the most Buddhist worshippers & foreign tourists was the magnificent white Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba! It is guarded by a wall with a frieze of 344 elephants & was built in 140 BCE. During the Dagoba’s consecration a portion of Buddha’s ashes were allegedly enshrined here. On this day it was encircled by a wide orange ribbon. Again many, many tables of offerings placed around it. At this place we saw a young monk in the saffron robes that couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8 years old.

See the tiny people at the base - diameter of 93 metres & height of 103 m

We enjoyed scooting around in the traffic in the tuk tuk, all the sites were separated by large distances with forest & a village feel to the area. Our next stop was at the Isurumuniya Vihara - a rock temple built in 300 BCE, many stairs to climb to the top, a museum with “Lover’s Sculpture “ from the 5th century AD. Robin chose to skip the stairs & went crocodile hunting in the nearby lake - he got some great photos!

Gray heron

The last stop of a fairly long day was the sacred Sri Maha Bodhi tree - central to Anuradhapura in a spiritual & physical sense. It was grown from a cutting brought from India & is said to be the oldest historically authenticated tree in the world - tended to by an uninterrupted succession of guardians for over 2000 years. Thousands of devotees visit to bring offerings.

Sri Maha Bodhi tree

We discovered another tasty restaurant & I tried biriyani cooked in a clay pot, delightful! I had to give up my morning runs as my running attire is too short for this very conservative country - women & girls here generally wear dresses to or under the knees. I did do a long walk along a Main Street & did not see one other Caucasian person. But very friendly people, I smiled & said hello to everyone & they smiled & said hello back.

Colourful buses

We are finding the Wifi here to generally be slow, not sure when my photos will upload to the cloud.

We left Anuradhapura in our host’s tuk tuk, headed for Sigiriya, a 58 km journey that took over 3 hours. A few stops for photos, including our first sighting of pelicans, for hot corn cooked over a fire with king coconut to drink. Lots of roadside stands selling fruits & veggies, a few random monkeys spotted, all on fairly narrow roads until we reached the town of Sigiriya. On to the next experience, Still Living the Dream! But anxious to get home!