I think Virle’s suffering from a bit of Buddha overload; she’s definitely itching to get back to the beach. As am I. But I managed to persuade her that it can be swimtime soon, but we can surely find a bit of time for a visit to the cultural cornucopia that is Anuradhapura. So we took the bus this morning, and a couple of hours later find ourselves in this dusty, busy town in the middle of the island. And boy did we hit the ground running.
Started out by hiring us another scooter. There are numerous sites spread willy nilly hereabouts, and though we played with the idea of getting bicycles, the distances and the heat – not to mention that the available options seemed pretty pricey – persuaded us that a scooter probably was actually the only realistic option. So after a couple of WhatsApp enquiries, we managed to get a really good deal on a bike, and after a slightly surreal pickup, from a completely unmarked suburban house, off we buzzed.
Headed first for a ‘lakeside view’, which again started out a bit weirdly, as the road turned into a track became a path which steadily got narrower and narrower until it eventually petered out into nothing, with no sign of the promised ‘view’. But we could see the lake, maybe fifty metres ahead, surrounded by reeds and boggy ground, lush with beautiful wild flowers, a lone fisherman thigh deep in the water.
Flushed with success, we headed off in search of sights and after only a few minutes pretty much stumbled across what I’ve now discovered to be Sada Hiru Seya: a truly vast hemispherical stupa, (second largest in the country apparently), which, it turns out, was built this century, in remembrance of members of Sri Lanka’s armed forces who died in the country’s civil war. A man selling flowers to lay before the Buddhas insisted on 200 for parking, on what authority I have no idea, but he did look after V’s helmet, and also told us that we could go up the road over the road, which led to Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi, the sacred fig tree grown from the original Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India, under which the Buddha attained enlightenment, which is widely held to be the world’s oldest human-planted tree with a known planting date – 288 BC.
Off we went, and sure enough we reached the tree. Which turned out to be a strange and rather beautiful, as well as somewhat unsettling experience. Strange and beautiful because though the tree itself was, well, a tree, albeit quite a large one, and looking very well for its age, the whole place felt so spiritual and devout, the droning sound of prayers filling the air; unsettling because we couldn’t help feeling like interlopers. Bluntly, it just felt wrong to be in such a place, among such people, as ‘tourists’. I took one picture of a wall carving – loved the puckish wee feller in the corner), but couldn’t bring myself to photograph the worshippers and priests. It just felt wrong. A very moving experience, but time to go.
We decided that was enough culture for one afternoon, and headed off to the Royal Pleasure Garden, where there was said to be a lake good for sunsets. And so it proved. Oh, and the kingfisher? Virle spotted it as we rode past, and we turned back, fully expecting it to have flown away, but no. Happy to pose, and still there when we left.
