A very wet Sigiriya

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigiriya

We met our tour jeep for the day at 8.30am after several slightly annoying whatsapp messages.
Our driver was Madushan and whilst v nice, spoke v little english which made the day difficult as we couldn’t communicate the need for flexibility.
Anyway we got on the road and arrived at Sigiriya at 9.30am ( later than I wanted but bound by tour times)
We set off for this v impressive castle on the top of the imposing rock, through some beautiful botanical and boulder gardens.
The entrance to the rock was through a gigantic boulder gateway, then up many, many stairs and a spiral staircase to the impressive frescoes. These depicted voluptuous women with the tiniest waists!!
Back down the spiral staircase and along the ‘mirror wall’ which was actually just a stucco wall.
After more steps we arrived at the impressive lion’s claws gateway to the actual stairway to the rock top, palace ruins.
At this point the cloud and monsoon rains came in... and decided to stay!!
K was v brave because the next part of the climb up the sheer cliff face was not nice if u don’t like heights!! Arriving at the top in the cloud and rain wasn’t much better!!
Despite the weather and not really being able to see the 360 views, the impressive ruins of the palace could still be appreciated.
By now we were totally saturated. We explored the top before making our way back down all of the steps back to the botanical gardens. Not a thing was dry!!!
We almost swam back to the Jeep and made the driver take us to a cafe so we could warm up with a coffee. The plan was to visit a spice garden but bugger that- 2 x pots of coffee it was.... and still the rain poured down!!!
Next it was off to the safari part of the day... we weren’t sure elephants liked the rain and by now we were feeling a bit dejected..,. Anyhow off we went.
Ps not many photos of Sigiriya as it was too wet to get the phone outRead more