Sigiriya, Sri Lanka: 1 day
NOVEMBER 2012
My friend Alana and I took a trip to Sri Lanka together in November. She had friends of friends who lived in Colombo, and for the first few days, they took us around Colombo and Galle. On the last day, we were on our own to book a day tour before heading back to the airport. We negotiated with the cab driver that had picked us up from the airport to take us to Sigiriya, one of the tourist destinations in the north of Colombo.
We were up early in the morning around 5am, prepared to face the next 14 hours on the road. The distance in miles wasn’t as far as expected, but since the roads were underdeveloped and extremely steep, we were cooped up in the car for a large part of the day. It took us over 6 hours to get to Sigiriya.
Sigiriya, Lion Rock Sinhala
Sigiriya Rock
Cars adeptly weaved down narrow roads, and we had to maneuver around oncoming traffic to overtake slower cars. It was extremely intimidating to watch large trucks barreling towards the front of the car. Half of the roads weren’t paved, and we bumped along dirt paths littered with hundreds of stray dogs. Every dog seemed to have a death wish, and as we drove along, they refused to move from their claimed spot in the middle of the road. Our taxi driver simply drove around each dog playing chicken with passing cars. At one point in our journey, our driver had to make a U-Turn. I spotted a dog lying on the ground, which was adamant to stay where he was. Our tire was on top of his body before I yelled out, “There’s a dog under the car!”. Our driver stopped, and the dog got up and trotted off as if nothing had happened.
The city:
Sigiriya. A tourist destination located smack in the middle of a vast, lush jungle. The Lion Rock rose high above the jungle canopy and towered grandly over our heads.
Sigiriya Rock
The accommodation:
We stayed at a friend of a friend’s house in Colombo. See post here:
The people:
See post here:
The food:
Monkey and his mango
We picked up a quick snack of mangos and chili salt by the roadside. It was absolutely delicious. The mangoes were sour and sweet, and the chili salt gave a little bit of a spicy kick. We saw some cute little wild monkeys eating mango on the floor, and I approached one to try and offer it some more. It immediately whipped around and hissed loudly at me, with its back arched and claws out. Not so cute after all, and in retrospect, a pretty dumb decision on my part to approach the wild animal.
Angry monkey
The sights:
We made it to Sigiriya around 11am. Sigiriya, otherwise known as Lion Rock, is a massive stone column over 200 meters high. A long time ago, the king used this site to build his palace.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigiriya
Tiny Buddha in the distance from the top of Sigiriya Rock
Wall paintings on Lion Rock
On our way to the rock, we drove past an enormous white Buddha in the middle of the jungle. Our friendly cab driver decided that he wanted to scale the rock with us, since after years of driving tourists around, he had never been to the top. We started the steep climb up together. Rows and rows of stairs towering over the jungle led us high into the air. We stopped at the midway point to take a break, and I saw that we had a perfect view of the lush green jungle that stretched beyond what we could see. Far in the distance, I spotted the enormous white Buddha as a little speck poking out over the canopy. We continued the ascent. Higher and higher we went. There were gorgeous cave paintings that were still present on the rock walls. When we finally reached the top, it felt like we could see the entire country. It was absolutely breathtaking!
Made it to the top!
Sigiriya Rock
As we were enjoying the view, it began to drizzle. Knowing that it was a tropical country, we knew there was a chance that a monsoon rain was coming. The worst place to be stuck in a lightning storm would be at the highest point for miles, so we hurriedly began our descent. We were lucky that it never did end up storming, and we strolled through a light rain back to the taxi.
The transit:
It was time to head to the next destination, Kandy. We piled into the car, and were off to the north in due time. To be continued!
I wish I could have seen… The snow leopards at a Sri Lankan safari!
Goodbye Sigiriya!
Finding Oysters 