Sigiriya

As we shift south towards higher country, we spent Christmas Day in the tiny village of Sigiriya, which is named after a much larger ancient city, which was located at the base of a 150m-high flat top rock that was home to a temple/palace of the same name.

For tourists and locals alike, traveling to the top of Sigiriya to visit the ruins of that palace is quite the popular endeavor. We woke up early to be at the trailhead at 8:00, hoping to beat the worst of the sun, and of the crowds.

The rock is a very attractive pre-Cambrian quartz feldspathic gneiss, with some areas rich in garnets as big as your thumb:

But no-one is here to look at the rocks. The walk up is built of brick steps, of steel stairs with some grades verging upon ladders, and the occasional strange steel step hybrid. All around is evidence of the steps and shelves carved into the walls by the iron-age founders of the mountain top temple, presumably dug to support rope and wood ladders or staircases.

At places, there are rock overhangs where 1000-year-old frescoes are preserved, depicting either celestial nymphs, or King Kassapa's concubines, depending on who you ask. How the hell the artists got to the shallow hollows halfway down a sheer 150m cliff to lollygag about painting nymphs is not clear, nor is how any presumed audience would get here...

The most harrowing part of the climb is from the first platform to the top, a section you enter by walking between the lions paws, which is a pretty Indiana Jones kinda way to go anywhere...

Archeologists are pretty sure the paws are the remains of a large lion figure that created an imposing entrance to the palace. Interpretations differ on what the lion's head actually looked like.

At the top is a couple of hectares of relatively flat plateau, where from ~400ad to ~1300ad, a palace stood. All that remains are some foundations, staircases, garden walls and pools, all 150m above the surrounding countryside.

We spent probably an hour on the site, then started down just as the tourist busses arrived. The difference between 8am and 10am is notable.

That evening we hiked up a nearby hill called Pidurangala, which was an easy 20-minute scramble to the bare mountaintop. Up there we were provided sunset views of the nearby Sigiriya and the spectacular jungles and farms of the surrounding countryside.

Christmas dinner was curries served from clay pots in a dirt-floored thatched-roof hut, served by a very pregnant woman (which made the environment uncomfortably manger-like).

There was no turkey, but the pumpkin curry was out of this world.

 

 

Posted with Blogsy