Touching history (1)
Sri Lanka 2011
When I am on holiday, I am always interested in learning something about historical places and events but sometimes these things stand out and make me take more notice. In 2011 I had another great holiday, this time touring Sri Lanka. Amongst all the beautiful and interesting things I discovered there, two particularly stick in my mind. There were two places where I felt touched by the history of this small island. The first was an ancient city which dates from the 10th Century and the second was a devastating event in our own lifetime.
After flying from Manchester to Dubai and then onwards to Columbo for an overnight stay, we had a whistlestop tour of the capital before heading north to Habarana and the Cinnamon Lodge Hotel. Here the rooms were situated in small blocks around the beautiful gardens. It was necessary to keep your doors and windows closed to avoid the marauding monkeys who populated the gardens, eyeing you up as you walked to your room and jumping all over the rooftops early in the morning. To me the hotel is especially memorable for its deliciou food, with lots of choice and it is the only hotel I have ever stayed in where there were so many desserts to choose from that they had their own (chilled) room!!
We set off from the Cinnamon Lodge to visit the ancient city of Polonnaruwa, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Many hundred years ago, Polonnaruwa was the capital of Sri Lanka but today it is renowned for the ruins of a 12th century garden city built by King Parakramabahu.
As you can see, many structures are still standing and we spent some time looking around. Close to the buildings but quite separate in Gul Vihara (The Rock Monastery), containing four huge sculptures of Buddha, thought to portray him close to the time of his enlightenment, Polonnaruwa being a centre for the growth of Buddhism around that time. The seated statue is 4.6m tall, the standing statue is almost 7m tall and the reclining statue is over 14m long. There has been a lot of speculation about what was built between and around the statues as the fourth, smaller statue is within a cave. I think they are beautiful and amazing pieces of work.
Polonnaruwa is also home to a troupe of macacques, who live their lives amongst the old buildings. I’m always fascinated by monkeys, although I don’t always like their over-inquisitive attitude, especially when directed at me and I do find macacques quite scary at times. However, this troop were busy just getting on with their lives. Maybe they were holding back and preparing to appear in several nature programmes across multiple platforms. One tiny new-born member of the troop, Gremlin, was even the star of an episode of “Planet Earth Live” in 2012!
From Habanara, we made our way, via more temples and Buddhas to the town of Kandy. In Kandy we visited the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic (the relic being one of Buddha’s teeth). Another World Heritage site, it draws pilgrims from across Sri Lanka and beyond and we joined some of them presenting their petitions. The relic is usually contained within a room which we could n only glimpse from the doorway but we learned that, every four years, the relic is paraded around the town for a whole week .
When we left Kandy, we started to climb up and up along narrow roads with hairpin bends until we were among the tea plantations, full of tea pickers. Then on to Mackwoods for a look around their factory and, of course, a taste of their tea and an opportunity to buy (items that we will have a great problem stuffing into our suitcases at some point!). After a night in Nuwara Eliya we made our way down and down again from the hills, with even more terrifying drops at the side of the road and our heroic driver inching his way past roadworks which seemed to continue for miles. At last we found ourselves at Yala National Park, where we had an evening and an early morning visit.
It was during this visit that we found ourselves at a beach which, we were told, was one of the main beaches struck by the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami. Looking so calm and peaceful it was hard to even begin to imagine the horror of that day but there, in the first photograph below, is a memorial sculpture to remind us.
During the rest of our trip, as we visited Galle and arrived at our final stop at Beruwala, we constantly saw signs of devastation, with many houses left empty; some abandoned by their owners, some where whole families had perished. We visited a nursery and a school where many of the children were orphaned by the tsunami. We heard stories of loss, including one day, while on a river boat trip, the owner told us that his boat had been lifted up from the sea and transported onto the main road of the town. Luckily, he was elsewhere at the time. But we also saw the resilience of people getting on with their lives. The tourism industry seemed to be playing a valuable part.
One Anne and Her Dog 