Morning lake tour and another ancient city

 

Feb. 16

            We got up before dawn, not nearly as well rested as we should have been.  Our host drove us a short distance to a property at the edge of the tank where we were met by our tour director and his father.  They helped us get through the electric elephant fence and onto a flat-topped pontoon boat equipped with two cottage chairs for us. 

             We set out on the water in the dark with our hosts paddling lightly, so it was nice and quiet.  We watched the sun rise with many birds flying all over the place and locals fishing on the water.  We seemed to be the only tourists on the water.  Our guide had limited English so we weren’t sure about what types of birds were seeing but kingfishers, brown eagles, pelicans and tons of cormorants were definitely among them.  We came close to the shore to look at some buffalo grazing and then headed out to the centre of the lake to check out bird island.  As we circled it, many of the birds took off and then landed after we left their part of the island as the closest alternative roosting spots were far away.  It was quite a wonderful trip.

            We came back after several hours to have banana pancakes with fresh fruit and real coffee on our lakeside porch.  After some packing and lounging Bernard came to pick us up and we were off.

            Much of today’s route involved retracing yesterday’s stretch of highway and then we headed west for Anuradhapura.  This was the first major capital city of Sri Lanka but it kept being attacked by India.  It’s more ruined than Polonnaruwa but is more spread out and has many holy places that are still visited today, including many functioning temples.

Bird Island!

             We got there in mid-afternoon so Bernard suggested visiting some sites right then to take some of the busyness off of the next day.  We got our tickets, again large and perforated, and checked out the museum by the ticket office.  He pointed out many stupas (big, solid domes) in the area, including one which was the second highest structure in the world to the pyramids way back when.  We’d seen lots of stupas elsewhere so we didn’t feel the need to get out and walk around each one.  Many people were doing these walks and all of the places we went to on this day were crowded with busloads of the faithful.  Bernard told us that this was an important festival and that small villages made an annual pilgrimage to these temples as a local group.

            The first temple had nice pools around it and a rooftop walkway to check out the view.  The second was much larger and busier as it had the sacred bodhi tree inside of it.  This is the ancestor of the Buddha’s enlightenment tree in Bodhgaya and was actually used as a source to replace that one when it died.  We walked around the outside but it was busy and we were tired so we didn’t go inside.

The Bohdi tree temple.

            We headed into the modern town, which was fairly large, and tried to find the place we were staying.  It was on a back alley and had no sign so it was tricky to get to (a few of the places we stayed at were like this -what’s so tricky about putting a sign up?)  but had a really nice courtyard and a big, clean newly-renovated room.  The courtyard looked out onto a tank and the plan was to walk along the water and hit one of many restaurants nearby.  Instead, after two days of excessive walking among ruins, we opted to eat at the hotel.  The food was fine and the courtyard was an excellent place to watch the sun go down.