Blogs from North Central Province, Sri Lanka, Asia - page 10

Saw a lot of Tempels. Beautiful colours. Our driver Asela showed us everything.... read more

The Cultural Triangle - Polonnaruwa , Anuradhapura and Sigiriya We awoke at seven and drew back the curtains to reveal the vast Kandalama tank fifty metres beneath us, surrounded by forest and not a building to be seen. We had coffee on our large balcony listening to the myriad bird calls and watching the cormorants busily fishing, the egrets urgently flapping off in search of breakfast, colourful orioles darting in and out of the branches and the Brahmini kites hovering with intent above it all. It was magical, and not a human or mechanical sound to be heard. Later we left for a two-hour drive to the World Heritage Site of Polonnaruwa where the ruins of an ancient city lay sprawling along the edge of a lake. Although Polonnaruwa had been an important settlement for ... read more

Statue of Liberty on the Open Market: The Ownership of Cultural Property We were discussing the ability of an oversized monkey to abduct a toddler when the Englishman approached us alongside the Tivanka image house in ancient Polonnaruva. Tugging the hem of his collared bowling shirt over the taut waistband of his cargo safari shorts, he pointed to the tops of the trees with a crooked arm. “What do you reckon, bear monkeys?” Born and raised in the eastern Midwest, I knew nothing more about monkeys than your average zoo-going American, but that their opposable thumbs and toes had the tendency to make me irrationally nervous. I smiled and shrugged politely, as did my two compatriots. “They look gray to me,” the Englishman continued, unabated by our silence. “Say, what was the name of those Indians, ... read more

FIELD STUDIES AT ANURADHAPURA After a morning class, it was once again back on the bus. The first part of the ride retraced the roads we had traveled heading to Giritale, but eventually we hit a fork in the road and turned towards Anurahapura. During the bus trip, we made a few stops to see some early archaeological sites. The first stop was simply a small tank, or manmade lake, which was made to hold irrigation water for early farmers. Little or nothing else was left here, except for the grave site across the road. A short stroll led us to the rock graves, which had been cleaned up and cleaned out by the archaeologists. The dead were buried rolled up into large ceramic pots. This was also the place where Bob found a road-side knife ... read more

We left Days Inn at 8am ready for our long guided journey to Anuradhapura via a Hindu temple, the cave temples of Dambulla and the rock fortress of Sigiriya. The intricately decorated Hindu temple was first; its tower adorned in Hindu deities was a sight to behold. After a couple of hours we reached Dambulla, and after paying our entry our guide left us to climb to the top of the hill and to the temple, after completing the 45 minute stair climb we were quite tired as you could imagine in such heat and humidity so we took a quick breather before exploring the numerous temples which were carved into solid rock over 2000 years ago! Reclining Buddha’s were in every chamber, hundreds of Buddha’s in different poses carved from solid rock were surrounded by ... read more