Save A Prayer...For The Lion Rock

Duran Duran filmed part of their Save A Prayer video at the UNESCO listed Sigiriya Rock, also known as Lion Rock. We therefore included a climb to the top of the rock to our itinerary.

Roy's Villa's typical itinerary involves shuttling their guests to climb a hill at 4.45am to watch the sunrise over Sigiriya Rock, and then the hikers are brought to Sigiriya Rock itself. We declined this option as we wanted to focus on reenacting the scene from Save a Prayer. Besides, we didn't want to piss of our fellow hostel mates by taking a long time filming at the summit of Sigiriya Rock. So, we requested a tuk tuk from Roy's. We set off at 6.15am to beat the crowds and the heat. Ravi, Roy's brother, drove us there via tuk tuk and he told us to send him a WhatsApp message when we decide to descend.

The rock itself was awe inspiring as we approached it. We started our climb up some concrete stone steps. After the first set of steps, we hit the iconic lion's paws. We continued on stone steps, transitioned to a metal staircase, and then went to back to climbing concrete steps again before hitting the summit. The rock itself is about 600 feet high, and there were over 1,000 steps. We didn't take more than 20 minutes to get to the summit.

At the summit, we busied ourselves with recreating the scenes from the video. Duran Duran filmed their scene there with the help of a helicopter. We obviously didn’t have a helicopter at our disposal, and we didn’t have a drone either (they were banned at the summit anyway) so we made our own interpretation of the scene from ground level. After that, we wandered around the summit admiring the view and the palace ruins before descending and returning to Roy's Villa for a well earned breakfast. The descent included a diversion up a spiral staircase to view frescoes of mostly bare breasted women. Photos of the frescoes were not allowed 🚫.

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