Exploring the ancient ruins at Polonnaruwa, the capital of the second kingdom of Sri Lanka (obviously not called Sri Lanka at that point).
The king’s bath. Hopefully it wasn’t so green when he used to use it.Many carvings. Elephants, Lions, and strange munchkin like people.
More monkeys.
This circular building had 4 sets of steps leading to 4 Buddha statues. There were explicit instructions for tourists not to take photos of themselves with their backs to the statues. I definitely saw some obnoxious tourists do it anyway.Hard to tell what’s going on here…is it a tongue? A trunk?The same carving accompanied each set of stairs.
Natalie looks on, and ponders?This bird was flying around nearby, so I tried to snap a shot.A moss covered stupa.A bigger, less moss covered stupa.This photo doesn’t quite give the scale of how large this statue was.Natalie got bitten on the foot by a something… an ant, maybe? She was not impressed.The outside of the temple with the giant statue. Inside there was still some of the original paintwork.A change of region comes with a change of monkey! We’re now in Anuradhapura.A giant white stupa. A holy festival occurs in order to paint the whole thing, every once and a while.A bird, perched on a spire of one of the image houses attached to the stupa.The elephants sure get stuck with all the heavy lifting…Cows, roaming free. At one point while cycling around, I had to shout at a group of them to get them off the road. I’m still not entirely sure I was effective.The change of meaning of symbols.The mirror ponds. Something about the first being so good, that they had to build another.In comparison to Polonnaruwa, Anuradhapura is older and also still living. There are houses dotted in and amongst the ancient ruins and stupas, and almost every temple is still an active wordship site.This stupa doesn’t really look too much different from the ones at Polonnaruwa, except for the fact that this one was monstrously huge. It was hot while we were here, and we bailed walking around the perimeter of this stupa due to its size.A bird, perched on an outcrop at the elephant pool.A human, perched on the stairs at the elephant pool.Climbing and exploring.Ancient gardens, a glmps into what greenspace design was like in ancient Anuradhapura.This guy. Obliged me,, by staying still as I got closer.The view from the top of an old old temple.
