Rathamalt

From Sigiriya it wasn’t far to Anuradhapura, but we spent some time on the way at Dambulla cave temples. Sri Lanka has eight UNESCO World Heritage sites and this was our seventh and last. At this point the kids were nearing the edge of their temple tolerance and our legs were groaning at climbing up another lengthy set of steps. We were tired enough to get completely conned by the lotus seller halfway up who tried to charge an outrageous amount for an armful of flowers which we ended up shoving back at her, both sides of the transaction a bit huffy.

The cave temples were heavily decorated and magnificent in their sheer size. There were five separate rooms, each with the most incredible fully painted interiors and Buddhist statuary - no space left unadorned. They were also heaving with people and very hot inside, so we had to pace out our wonder. Parts of the caves were roped off (in quite a cavalier way, this is Sri Lanka after all) with restoration work happening on the frescos. This just involved painting over faded paint, although perhaps the surfaces had been cleaned and prepped before we arrived. The painters were there to work, not chat, but we gathered that restoration works are more or less continuous, ie, when they reach the end they start again.

L0uis has a separate post coming on our safari trip to Wilpattu National Park, but we did a few other interesting things in Anuradhapura. After a few weeks of quite fast and touristy travel we were winding down to a quieter stop, so we were quite selective in our choices. At Louis’ request we visited the Bodhi tree (Jaya Sri Mahi Bodhi), an ancient and sacred ficus. It is reputed to have grown from a cutting of the tree under which the Buddha was sitting when he became enlightened, brought to Sri Lanka from India in 236 BC and planted here. And it’s still alive! This makes it the tree with the oldest known planting date in the entire world. It is highly sacred in Buddhist tradition, with millions making the pilgrimage every year. Successive regimes have added enhancements to the tree including temple areas, guard rails, fencing and other hedging trees so that it’s well protected from the pilgrims but it’s still huge enough that it casts plenty of shade to go around. It is, of course, inside a temple complex which was stricter than some others in terms of dress code, so we needed to borrow lengths of fabric to wrap around as sarongs. “Uhhh”, Francie groaned, “literally, another temple?” We didn’t stay in there long. It too was thronging with people and we would quickly have lost each other but for the fact we stood head and shoulders above everyone else. We were also the only folk not dressed in white, which is universally worn by Sri Lankans in their temple visits and also their school uniforms (side note: how brilliant that all schools have the same basic uniform: white shirt and shorts for boys, white shirt and gym smock for girls, with just the ties, socks and hair ribbon colour specific to each school).

Late one afternoon we headed over to Mihintale, an ancient hilltop temple site surrounded by ruins with several massive stupas on the peaks. Another precarious rock climb where, given the condition of the access staircase, we were surprised to see some very small children and some very elderly aunties. We kept a tight hold on the kids! Sitting on a terrace at sunset the kids were starving so I pulled out some sugar buns and instructed them to eat quickly before the monkeys arrived. They were halfway through the buns when we got ambushed. Note these are big monkeys, aggressive and fast, and they’ll fight you for the food. The children both did exactly as instructed and threw the buns away from their bodies, but only as the monkey was right upon us. It came for M0ses’ bun and got too close for comfort - just as it was about to jump up on my squawking child, I swung my handbag around and blocked the monkey from touching him. Poor kids, what a fright! The monkey ran off with M0ses’ bun, leaving Fr4ncie upset but also cross that she’d had to throw her own bun away and it was still sitting there untouched on the terrace. She reeeeally wanted that bun! Another monkey swooped it up within a few minutes. No more snacks until we were well clear of the monkeys.

We didn’t see it, but the Mihintale complex also contains ruins of an ancient hospital, dating from many many centuries before Western countries discovered that isolating sick people was a way of keeping healthy people well. Colonisation certainly didn’t provide the great medical advances the colonisers thought it did. Even today there are parallel healthcare systems here, the Ayurvedic and the Western. Treatments will often cross over but if you’re needing healthcare and have a preference as to how you’re treated, you'll need to check what’s on offer at the clinic. Imagine a world in which rongoā Māori hospitals and clinics exist around the country in parallel with the Western system and both are treated with equal respect.

In Anuradhapura we were very sad to farewell L0uis at the train station, bound for New Zealand via Colombo, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Auckland and then Dunedin, in total a 60 hour trip that lasted from Saturday our time until Tuesday morning NZ time. After arriving at Dunedin airport at 8:50am he walked straight into his first meeting at university at 10am. We have thoroughly enjoyed having this precious grown-up kid with us, he’s a wonderful travel companion. His enthusiasm and curiosity rub off on everyone around him and he makes us all see the world with fresh eyes. So grateful to have been able to share this lovely month in this lovely country with him xxRead more