Today we went to Sigiriya, the home of the Lion Rock. It is an enormous granite outcrop with 1000 steps up winding open iron stairs, not for the faint hearted.
At the bottom are extensive formal gardens with swimming pools which the legendary King whose name I forget, had built for his 500 concubines.
At the base of the rock are two giant sized lion’s paws but the rest of the carved lion has long since worn away, not surprising as it was carved in the 6th century.
I suppose it would have been similar to the Sphinx. The bottom few hundred steps are carved of marble,
which does not occur naturally in Sri Lanka, then you begin the ascent of the rock
face on the zigzagging stairway
There are definitely no concessions to health and safety. I saw women in high heels, flip flops, no shoes at all, very old people, big people, a woman with a walking stick all determined to get to the top - as we were. Because it was a Sunday, there were more people than usual and there were queues and traffic jams. Half way up there is a gallery where paintings remain from 6th century of goddesses rising out of the clouds. The colours are still vibrant and there is a man made wall protecting them from the elements. At one time that wall was polished to shine like a mirror so that it reflected the paintings hence its name The Mirtor Wall
But at the top, you could see the original walls, mostly in ruins, of the palace on a number of levels with again a huge swimming pool.
Those concubines must have enjoyed swimming! The view from the top over the rainforest, gardens and an enormous distant Buddha would have been fantastic but sadly a mist descended and we could see almost nothing.
But the walk down, after the iron staircaseswas lovely through a wooded area with caves and grottos where the monks would meditate.
Oh by the way, the legendary king whose name I forgot, was bumped off after being tortured by one of his hundreds offsons, serves him right for having so many concubines
Back for lunch and our by now favourite Lion beer before a trip by ox cart, catamarin and tuc tuc to a village to see local customs.
The heavens opened and the rain was monsoonial if that is a word. The ox on the cart (Ronnie said”Bullock” which I thought was a bit uncalled for), looked very downtrodden to me
. But our guide said that if they were not used for tourism to earn money for the village people, they would go to the slaughter house. There was no suspension and the dirt tracks were bumpy and by now muddy so after a 20 minute bone shaking ride we arrived at the river.
When I said catamaran, you might have been thinking Amricas Cup but the truth was more like 2wooden canoes connected by a large box. It was still tipping down and there was no shelter but at least we didn’t seeany crocodiles which had been seen the day before
. Across the river was the willage with a largeish open sided hut. 2 smiling Sinhalese ladies with absolutely perfect white teeth showed us how to thresh rice and miller, grind it to a powder and bake flat breads on an open fire.
They also made a kind of salsa with cockanut, onion, garlic, tomato and salt called sambol. They gave each of us a slice of the dark finger millet roti bread and sambol on a palm leaf to try and a herb tea in a half cockanut shell.
After that we had a demonstration of how to husk a cockanut and make food out of the coir. Did you know you can only crack a cockanut widthwise, impossible lengthwise.
You can cut up the flesh to eat or grate it and use it to make cockanut cream for curries. The shell are partially burned and put down well as copra to purify the water. Or you can put them roundthe base of other trees to provide compost and fertiser. The leaves of the cockanut tree ante used to weave into panels for the roof.
They last a year and are watertight. We know this as it was still pouring down! A very interesting display but I did wonder if the ladies lived in the very nice bungalow we passed on the way back and popped out to the local shop to get a sliced loaf for breakfast?
A fleet of tuc tucs arrived to take us back to civilisation. The dirt tracks were mud baths by now and some got stuck and had to be rocked out of the mud. But there was lots of laughing and it was a great experience.
