We were picked up in the morning to head to Polonnaruwa Citadel. Polonnaruwa is the second most ancient of Sri Lanka's kingdoms, and was first declared the capital city by King Vijayabahu. Today the ancient city remains one of the best planned archeaological relic sites in the country and has been declared a world heritage site.
Polonnaruwa was first established as a military post by the Sinhalese kingdom. And, it was renamed Jananathamangalam by the Chola dynasty after their successful invasion of the country in the 10th century. Raja Raja Chola I built Vanavan Mahadevisvaram, a Shiva temple at Polonnaruwa named after his queen, which presently is known as Siva Devale. The temple among other contained Ganesha and Parvati statues of bronze north and central parts of Sri Lanka was under this period ruled under Rajendra Chola I directly as a Chola province. However, following the year 1070 AD ended the Chola rule in the island, and Polonnaruwa was captured by Vijayabahu I of Polonnaruwa also known as Vijayabahu the great.
We started in the museum to get history of the temple, how it was built and developed and for what purpose every structure was created. There were also some old relics of tools, medicinal surgery equipment and weapons shown in the museum, as well as one of the first scales which was extremely small for doctors to measure out medicine dosages.
After the museum we head outside to start touring the ruins. This would be a good time to point out it is once again raining. I had on my rain jacket so felt pretty protected but ask me again in a few hours how soaked I am.
The first group of ruins you walk through after entering the ruins of the Ancient City is the Royal Palace Group. This group of buildings dates from the period of King Parakramabahu I (1153 – 1186). The King`s Royal Palace is a massive structure, once including 50 rooms supported by 30 columns. Even today it is quite an impressive building, but picture it being seven floors.
We walked through pointing out which rooms we thought were kitchens, washrooms and bedrooms, as well as inclusive of a small theater with a raised platform for the king to view live entertainment.
Making our way to the audience hall and swimming pool we took in all of the detail that made up the structures. Below you'll see in the top picture a view of what was the swimming pool, the structure on the ground, known as sandakada pahana or a moon stone and symbolises the cycle of Samsara (continuous cycle of life, death and rebirth) in Buddhism. You'll notice on it there are carvings of elephants across the top and horses below. It was said that there used to be lions and bulls around the moon stone as well but both of those creatures are considered sacred in Buddhism and were removed. These stones are often used as what we would consider a welcome mat into a home or dwelling.
The audience hall is shown below that with impressive carvings into the stone and lions at the entrance.
It was a short drive to another area of the site to see the sacred quadrangle. This area is a compact group of beautiful ruins and the most concentrated collection of buildings in the Ancient City.
The Vatadage was the most incredible structure here in my opinion. It was a circular relic house with an outermost terrace. All four entrances were flanked by large guard stones, which if you look closely in the picture you'll notice in one hand he holds a sprouting branch and in the other is a vase with a lotus, around his head is a seven-hooded cobra hood for protection. Behind each entrance is a Buddha sitting in a meditation pose.
In order to enter this structure we had to remove our shoes and leave them by the entrance below.
Moving to the third out of four stops at Polonnaruwa was Rankot Vihara. This is a huge dagaba (dome shaped shrine containing relics of Buddha or a Buddhist saint) in great condition. It is the fourth largest dagaba in Sri Lanka and dates back to King Nissanka Malla (1187-1196). It looks like they were doing some renovation work to it so we couldn't get too close of a look.
Finally, the last stop at Polonnaruwa was to see the Buddha figures at Gal Vihara. There are three large Buddhas all cut from one long slab of granite. To give you an idea of size, the standing Buddha is almost 23' tall and the laying down Buddha is just under 46' long and is in a resting position, which they believe to represent death and the passing of the Buddha. These were absolutely incredible carvings and to see the size of them and cut from all one slab of granite was truly impressive.
We stopped after for a quick lunch, but we were already late from spending so much time at Polonnaruwa we had to hurry for our safari in search of some Asian Elephants!
Funny enough for us, we saw one on our way to our destination right on the side of the road. There are some roads that our driver says he prefers not to take in the dark or very early in the morning because of the elephants crossing the road or eating on the side of the road. Just like we try to avoid deer, they try to avoid elephants.
The elephant on the side of the road was a large male bull by himself, just walking and grazing with not a care in the world.
We made it to our safari just a little late and hopped in our jeep ready to go. Located in the heart of the Cultural Triangle Minneriya, Eco, and Kaudulla National Parks are among the best parks to see Elephants on the island, with large herds of elephants migrating between each park during different seasons. The parks mostly consist of a mixed forest of evergreen shrubs, a favorite habitat for animals, which include deer and wild elephants.
Once we entered the park our driver took off the canvas roof of the jeep as the rain stopped so we were able to stand up to see the whole park before us. At this point, this is what Jon and I like to call "ferrari safari". We had this joke in Africa that one of the driver's made, when they heard about an animal nearby on the radio they would pick up speed to get there in time for us to view it. This is how they drove in Sri Lanka as well. Fast. And bumpy.
Shortly into our drive we came across two elephants grazing on the side of the mountain. Since they were a bit far off we continued on our journey to find some elephants a bit closer. Closer we did find. We came across a herd of about 15-20 elephants, all grazing in the field behind the jeep. One elephant, we were told a teenager, most likely aunt to the calves nearby wanted to make sure we weren't a threat and started to approach the back of our jeep. As she approached she started getting a little more deliberate and Ram started telling her from the back to stop, thinking she was going to charge. She did start to charge but veered off at the last second, trumpeting as she stomped off!
Finally, we took a drive to a lookout point in the park where we were able to hike up a small hill and climb a tower to see views all around us. No nearby elephants but still made for a nice end to our drive.
