Blogs from Anuradhapura, North Central Province, Sri Lanka, Asia - page 4

Elephant Safari: A most unforgettable adventure for us--definitely one of our top experiences this trip. "The Gathering" of elephants that happens here toward the end of the dry season each year (August-September) is listed as 6th in the top wildlife experiences in the world. (Lonely Planet?) Our guide, with 8 years experience, was very helpful. He spotted many things we wouldn't have seen, including the larger native squirrel up a tree, a mongoose skimming across an opening, a monitor, a native hornets nest (big guys flying around it--2 cm long)... Our guide also explained how to tell a male elephant from a female one at a distance. The female has a boxy shape, with a flat back. The male has a rounded (convex) shape to his back. (I hope I got that right. No one would ... read more

Anuradhapura: The Ancient Capital of Sri Lanka We had a trained archaeologist as a guide taking us around some of the ruins of Sri Lanka's Anaradhapura, part of Sri Lanka's famed "Cultural Triangle", but between the speed of his accented English, the length of the names he was saying, and our lack of any framework of knowledge about the history, I was pretty puzzled when I set out to write this blog! Thanks to the internet for clarifying names and details. Please forgive me if I got something wrong. Anuradhapura was named the first political capital of Sri Lanka in 380 BC by King Pandukabhaya. It remained such through to the 11th century AD, roughly 13 centuries. Around 250 BC the Emperor Asoka of India sent his son Arhath Mahinda Thero to bring Buddhism to Sri ... read more

Arrived in Colombo at about 4am after a 10 hour stopover in Mumbai airport. Found a quiet “sleeping” area with couches to try to get some rest but the others resting there spent most of their time on their mobile phones and talking….but did manage to get a few minutes of shut eye. Feroze of Bobby Travels was at the airport to meet us – which was great – he took us straight to our hotel and we went to bed at about 5am – slept straight for 7 hours. Hot and steamy in the middle of the day but a nice walk along the beach late afternoon and a couple of drinks and dinner and then I settled in for a couple of movies. Negombo is on the beach and is only about 10kms from ... read more

We arrived at Dambulla where we saw a huge Giant Golden Buddha, recent rains had uprooted a large tree so we had to detour down a side road to visit the site. Although Dambulla is famous for its five cave Temples our guide, Jaywa said he would take us to a less visited similar site called Aluvihare Cave Temples near our hotel. This hotel was much more luxurious than the last and we had a little bungalow to ourselves set in a delightful garden full of birds with wild peacocks in the field nearby - it was good to see these magnificent birds in their natural environment. The hotel also had a lovely pool and we spent some time enjoying the surroundings and chilling........ Not too much rest though as in the afternoon we set off ... read more

Monday started off as all the other Mondays with tank cleaning and general other duties. After we had cleaned most of the tanks we decided to watch the walkers going by as they were walking to Jaffna in the north to raise money for a new children’s cancer ward. We then decided to go for our usual after tank cleaning paddle/swim. Stan got into the water even though he couldn’t swim and a large wave knocked his glasses off so he couldn’t see either! I decided to swim back to see if his glasses had washed up on the shore, the current was very strong swimming back and took a lot of effort to swim against it as I got back onto the beach I said to Lucy that we should get the others to swim ... read more