Ok, so its been a while since my last blog, as I have been out and about in the Dry Zone, with little access to internet. LOADS has happened in the last few days, so Ive decided to split the cultural triangle into two parts, this being the first:
Before we left for the cultural triangle, we didn't really do anything too exciting - I had my day of gastritis, and a few days in the hospital and the Lab, both of which I have already described ad nauseum, so I will begin on Saturday, and our journey from Kandy to Polonorawa. We left the university at about midday with some Japanese researchers who are researching the transfer of diseases (especially entamoeba dysentry) from monkey to man, via taking monkey fecal samples and analysing them. We were recruited for the study as extra labour, with free accommodation and entry to the cultural triangle sites in return (I would like to add that this blog is best read along with my pictures on facebook - as I cannot describe anything I have seen here to do it justice)
4 hours later we arrived 120km (you work out the average speed!) away in the ancient capital city of polonorawa, and much to our surprise found ourselves driven to our accommodation in the regional monkey sanctuary, which has played host to such legends as Sir David Attonbourgh in the past (spelling prob wrong). This was situated next to the biggest "Tank" in Sri Lanka (A tank being a man made lake, made 1000 years ago by damming a river... its 26 square miles big!). This tank was the local fishing lake, bath, washing machine, swimming pool, elephant watering hole, and a fantastic setting to see storks, kingfishers and countless other nameless birds and small amphibians!
After stopping off at "Monkey Camp" to drop off our kit, we were taken to the ruins of the ancient city itself, including a 100 year old palace, which had over 7000 rooms when it was complete. A few touts trying to sell awful tourist tat later, we had explored many of the most impressive areas of the site, including a huge Stuta (Dome with sticky out thing on top - Buddhist religious symbol), we went back to camp for dinner, far too much chat about monkey social groupings with the 25 year proprietor of the camp, and an earlyish night, for reasons which will become apparent!
5am is early. Very early in fact. However, it turns out most monkeys defacate at approx 6-7am after waking up in their sleeping tree, so if you want to collect those steaming little piles of science when they are fresh, its a sacrifice you have to make! However, I did not begrudge this as soon as I saw the incredible sunrise over the Tank, and got to look around the ruins (following monkeys of course) before the tourists were out of bed, and more importantly when people were not trying to sell us tat!
From here, after some brief sample analysis, and sightings of a brown mongoose (the reason why snakes are rare in the area!), and various awesome dragonflys, we moved on to Anuradhapura, the first, and most ancient capital of the early Sri Lankan throne, which houses the largest Stuta in the world (third largest ancient structure after the great pyramid and another Egyptian pyramid... which apparently contains enough bricks for a wall 3m high from London to Edinburgh!). We arrived late afternoon and stopped off to explore the site, which is much larger than Polonorawa, and was packed out with worshipers due to the fact that it was both a Sunday, and a Full moon day.
Packed out with Temple elephants and buddhist worshipers, we saw the procession of bowls and saffron robes to be given to newly ?ordained monks, with the procession lined with people touching and blessing the robes. The pure scale of the site, and the fact that it was rammed with people who had evidently travelled long distances accross Sri Lanka to be there (we heard of people travelling from 300km away to be there for the event as a kind of pilgrimage). This event culminated in the evening with a kind of carnival through the centure of Anuradhapura, with dancers, far too many people on 3m high stilts hopping on one leg (these stilts were literally strapped onto their legs... bad move I rekon!), and a veritable circus of elephants covered in what I can only describe as christmas lights! Oh and alot of people were throwing fire in all guises around the place... which was fun...
After this we turned in for the night (at about midnight) and got some nice "rest" in our sweatbath of a rest-house room before the quest for steaming piles of science would begin the next day. The next morning we moved to another set of ruins, about 10km away from Anuradhapura, where there were purportedly more monkeys. After climbing up into the jungle following monkeys until we weren't entirely sure where we were any more (we made it out obviously... but it did feel very Indiana Jones as we did it), we made our way back to the vehicles to move onwards. *wildlife note: Here we saw possibly the best animal I have ever seen, the giant land squirrel... imagine a squirrel that is the size of a medium size dog, and could probably eat a cat... and you are about there.... IT WAS AWESOME. See facebook for a couple of pics of it*
From here we drove down to Dambulla, near Sigiria, and were dropped off by the Japanese researchers, as they were going to go back to Kandy to further process the samples, whilst we explored the Sigiria area over the next few days. I dont want to spoil the next blog, but it involves walking up a 100m high temple twice, (three times for Ben), and old man following us up a hill and expecting to get paid, and Ben being bullied by monkeys... but thats for part II
xx
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