We’re back in Polannaruwa after five years. In fact, we’re sitting back at Gajaba Hotel for the night. I’m offline at the moment or I’d look up a blog entry from the exact day.
There are lots of differences though. On this trip, we have both of Jay’s sisters and auntie along for the ride. Unlike the previous time, we also have a driver and van.
We started right at 6:30, well actually 6:35 as the women can never seem to be ready at the exact time. We retraced our route of last week through Kurenegula. This time we continued to Dambulla. This was another place we we’d seen in 2004 but the Golden Temple was built after the others had seen it. It was worth the stop and age had made it all look less garish. We didn’t walk up the mountain the the Cave Temple as we couldn’t really spare the time.
We kept on going on back roads to Aukana. There’s a standing Buddha carved from rock there. It was quite modern appearing although it had actually been cut from the rock almost 2000 years ago. There’s not much I’ll touch today that’ll be anything but dust in the amount of time.
We continued here to Polannaruwa. First, we had a buffet Sri Lankan lunch which is really just serve-yourself rice and curry. It seems that many restaurants near the highways do this now.
Unbelievably Jay’s sisters had never visited the ruins here. This was once one of the ancient capitals of Sri Lanka. It is part of the so called ‘Cultural Triangle’. You can search for the name of the town on the Internet should you be interested in learning more. I had done my homework back five years ago. I could have liked to have seen it today but didn’t. We pulled in and the tourist price was now Rs 2875 to enter the archaeological site. We were only going to spend an hour or so, it didn’t seem worth it for me. The gals could enter for just the Rs 50 vehicle charge. I wanted them to go. Jay and I decided that the $25 saved would nearly buy two hotel rooms and we’d seen all the sites quite extensively last time. It has been there for more than a thousand years so I don’t expect too much has changed in the last five. Jay waited with me. We walked across the highway and actually were still in the ancient ruins. We walked near Parakranabahu, which is a manmade lake, called a tank, created for purposes of agriculture by an ancient king. The one we’re near is over 8 miles long!
We came back, drove along a 1940’s re-development of part of the tank’s wall and went to a statue of the king named above. Just off the tank road is this hotel. It seems to have slipped a bit since our last stay but our double room is about $12 and the women stayed in a triple for about $6 each. It seems there’s a big three storey addition half constructed. So maybe it’ll return to being posher after it’s all done.
We’ll get dinner at a restaurant out by the road. Then we’ll probably be in bed early so we can again be on the road at 6:30 am tomorrow.