Day 9 Sigiriya 4 August

Breakfast by Shanti, our first hopper! Rice flour bowl shaped pancake, ours had an egg in centre. Add in fruit, coconut roti and coconut with honey roti/pancake. Hopefully enough to get us to top of lion rock. 

Walked to foreigner entrance and parted with USD30 each: ouch. At least it goes to the restoration and maintenance of historical sites. If so I can live with that,

Lion rock is a massive complex that could be a palace or monastery on an 350m high rock with near vertical sides. 

As we entered, the Sri Lankan national anthem started, I am pleased to say eventually everyone showed respect and stood still in near silence. On to the climb first as it is already warm and humid with buses arriving by the minute.

The climb up proceeds in mostly single file to the mid level. We pass beautiful frescos and the mirror wall with graffiti, mostly poems to women, scribed in 6-14 th centuries. These are important as in shows language development. Sorry no photography allowed. ( these are copies taken in the museum)

At the mid level the path opens to a large platform with two huge lions paws, between which we pass for the ascent to the summit. Pretty hair raising, but I cannot imagine what it was like using the narrow steps carved from the rock. 

At the summit, 1.6 Hectares mostly covered in residual brick walls. Really impressive are the water tanks carved out of the rock!

We make it back down, thankful that we avoided the crush of people that were coming

Down to the beautiful garden with moats and ponds: half has been restored the other side natural. Great to see contrast. 

Goals met on watchs, back for rest, catch up on blog. Re-emerged and into town for a feed,saw elephant again: damn. Watching them never gets old