Sigiriya and The Long Awaited Escape From Kandy

Royal Gardens, Sigiriya

Strategy kicked in this morning. We drugged and fed Chris before even leaving the house. Success! We paid our room bill (which had somehow grown by 10% thanks to a 'service charge' we had never been charged anywhere but restaurants previously. And at least at restaurants it's on the menu so you know it's coming.) It's not the few dollars that is frustrating but rather that they choose not to tell you these things at the get go. Turns out this getting ripped off thing would set the tone for the rest of the day. However, we would later find the key to Star Light Guesthouse's bug and gecko infested room in our bag so now we must toss up whether to post it back to them or claim that its karma for not telling us that our room was actually going to be 10% more expensive than originally quoted.

The outskirts of Kandy really exemplify the scummy underbelly of Sri Lanka. The suburbs and surrounding towns are dirty, their rivers are polluted and the houses seem in a more extreme state of decay than anywhere we have seen. We went full pelt to get out of there as quickly as possible.

It was a smooth ride, despite one near miss with an oncoming bus, all the way to Habarana. We found a place to stay, scrubbed the diesel from our faces, again, and headed back out all by midday. It's amazing how much hotter it is now we're out of the hills. I think we had forgotten how ferocious the Sri Lankan heat could be. We were quickly reminded though.

In Habarana we found a few snacks for lunch which cost a lot more than they had cost us anywhere else.

Or first stop was the cave temples, 25km back towards Kandy, in Dambulla. Encouraged by all the great things other tourists were saying as they came down from the temples we went eagerly to the ticket office only to find that we could not enter as neither of us were wearing long pants. Bugger. New plan...Sigiriya!

Lion's Paws, Sigiriya

The aftermath of 'Man Fever.'

Sigiriya is basically a huge rock, 10km off the main road, back towards Habarana. We arrived intending to buy a 'round ticket' that would get us into a bunch of cultural sites as they were super expensive to buy singularly. As luck may have it, they no longer sell these tickets so we were forced to pay the $30 USD to enter. Determined to make the most of it, off we wandered.

Frescoes, Sigiriya

We checked out the frescoes on the rock, the mirror wall which looks nothing like a mirror and climbed to the summit. I'm starting to think more and more that we really are just like goats who like to be on top of things. A spiral staircase followed by stairs that jutted out from the rock tested Chris' vertigo and stamina. Considering he'd been sick for days, we sure didn't ease back into things. The views were lovely though. One girl thought they were soooo lovely, that she touched up her makeup and hair at the top before slipping one arm out of her backpack so she could better strike a leaning pose for the many, many photos her boyfriend would take of her.

Pond, Sigiriya summit

Water buffalo

Peacock

We took the backstreets, as we do, back to Habarana and came across all kinds of critters. Monkeys, dogs, water buffalo, cows and even a peacock. After having kept an eye out for crocodiles and keeping silent in fear of a wasp attack at Sigiriya, it really had been a wildlife kind of day.

Back in our guesthouse, we scrubbed ourselves once more before going to hunt down some dinner.

After responding to an elderly man's "hello," we found ourselves suddenly, and inescapably, in the company of Habarana's town drunk. He led us down the street where Tuk Tuk drivers tried to assist by pointing out the obvious...this old guy was pissed! We tried to lose him after some time by heading to a restaurant. Turns out he liked us so much he was willing to come in and sit down with us until the owners, who knew him by name, kicked him out. We sure attract the good ones!

Our order of rice and curry somehow got interpreted as "give me six curry dishes, a giant bowl of rice, two fried eggs and enough chilli to start a fire." And we were overcharged. Again. We really need to remember to ask the price of things before we commit.

As we climbed into bed without a mosquito net to protect us (this place is the first not to provide one), we were grateful that this guesthouse provides mattresses more than an inch thick. Both Chris and I have bruised hips from sleeping on our sides on mattresses that let the wooden piece of ply wood that supports you, dig right in. It might sound a little "princess and the pea," but when you've been sleeping on these mattresses for a couple of weeks, you sure do notice the difference.

Tuk Tuk wisdom: "small drops make the ocean."

Sri Lankan kilometres accumulated to date: 940km