Blogs from North Central Province, Sri Lanka, Asia

Our last two days in Mirissa flew over. Our family at the guest house invited us to eat with them on Saturday. A very kind and welcome invitation for some home cooked food. Fist thing was a shave for Chris and a trip to the tailor for me. I had spotted a shop that made clothes in a couple of hours and after my disappointing trip to Barefoot thought I would get something made. I walked in and the female owner was on the phone, chatting in English about hiding tax from the authorities! She didn't respond to me at all, her stiff was pretty boring and after 5 minutes browsing I left and she didn't stop for breath. Instead popped into “Aldi" and bought a cheap throw on dress and some flip flops. Had a ... read more

After 2 easy days of riding today was an early start for a hot & hard 70km ride to Ritigala before a 60km coach ride to our overnight stay at the Siyanco Holiday Resort, Polonnaruwa. The distance was not the problem but rather the wind, continuous slight rise & sections of bumpy roads. Frequent rehydration stops needed to replace the sweat. Much of the passing outlook was of rice paddies, man-made water tanks and patches of jungle. At Ritigala we visited the ruins of a beautiful Buddhist monastery where the ruins and rock inscriptions date back nearly 2000 years.... read more

R: Polonnaruwa was a 90 minutes drive from Kandalama. We started the day with another Sri Lankan breakfast - hoppers, dhal, curries and bread. Mmmm. Then we hit the road. Polonnaruwa is an ancient city that was used by one of the kings of Sri Lanka as a capital when Annurhadpura became indefensible against the South Indian attacks. When this happened, they also had to move the sacred tooth relic which a new temple being built to house the tooth of Buddha that has been revered in the country for centuries. First stop - the visitors centre. Now we have learned that Ranjan doesn't like museums - perhaps because he wants to tell us all of the information himself. Perhaps he is worried that what they will say will be different to his version, or maybe ... read more

We left Kandy not feeling like we were short changing it with our limited time there. The only thing we would have added would have been to get out into a tea plantation, though if we’d been more planned it turned out we could have fit that in too. It was Sunday, and we were heading up to the ancient cities. Our hotel said the first bus to Polonnaruwa on Sunday didn’t go until 9am. We didn’t believe this we thought they'd start earlier but not wanting to take the chance of losing sleep for nothing we decided we’d be at the bus station for 8:30am. We whizzed there in a tuk tuk and had no problem finding the right bus. Ours was somewhere down the back of the station but Sri Lankans are really helpful ... read more

Nas rytir v bezove dodavce se dostavil podle planu a vyrazili jsme na vylet do Polonnaruwy a Dambully. Aby nase plany nebyly uplne ustalene, tak nas presvedcil, ze lepsi bude poradi prohodit. Budiz... Dambulla je klaster, ve kterem je asi 150 soch Buddhu ve svatynich pod skalnim previsem, z nichz nektere jsou fakt stare. Ale at jsou stare jakkoliv, tak se lisi asi jako ceny nasich mobilnich operatoru. Kosmeticky. Takze treba jedna sada Buddhu ma zdvizeny ukazovacek na prave ruce, zatimco vedle stojici socha ma zvednuty i malicek. A to nechtejte, abych zabihal do podrobnosti o tom, jak se lisi konstalace prstu na leve ruce podle stoleti vzniku. Zajemce odkazu na sestisvazkove pojednani Gestures of Buddha: During the centuries od slovutneho W.H.O. Givesadamn. Takze zazitek. Jo, a v te jeskyni vymalovali i stropy, i kdyz castecne ... read more