Day 38 - We were supposed to get morning tea brought to our hotel rooms at 6:30 AM but that didn't quite happen. After inquiring, we had our tea closer to 7:15. By then, we had packed up our belongings and were ready to drive into Yala National Park and in particular, Sithulpawwa Rock Temple.
First up though was breakfast at a Perera & Sons bakery. They can be found all over the island and date back to 1902. You cannot tell from the picture how busy it was. We had string hoppers.
Yala is a famous national park and the home to many safari-type adventure companies. In fact, as a foreigner in that corner of Sri Lanka, everyone sort of assumes that's why you arrived there. We, however, wanted to go into the zone to see a Buddhist site that Jay had never visited.
It is a short distance to one entry point near Kataragama. As soon as we got to the park entrance, the road turned to dirt. And, as soon as that happened, we began to spot wildlife. There is a small sign in Sinhalese only that shows a tiny bypass around the regular park entrance. Of course, those going to just the religious rock temple need not pay the park entrance fees.
Along the road, peacocks were aplenty. We also saw boars and both small, spotted deer and a larger type more akin to a North American caribou. As soon as we reached the Sithulpawwa parking area, we were greeted by both a wild elephant and a troop of boars who'd decided that tourists are an easy target for free food.
The Sithulpawwa site existed several hundred years before Christ. It was a Buddhist monastery and a place for scholarship. Now devotees come to worship and take in the stunning area that clearly would be conducive to meditation.
This was our main activity for the day and we left directly from here for the trip home to Minuwangoda. We made a mistake by trying to go back for a bit of the way along the coast. We went into Hambantota city and found it is now cut off by the enormous, government port project, that is now essentially owned by China. We went north for the bypass and discovered it'd be easier to simply take the new Expressway No. 6 that connects to the Southern Expressway to Colombo. We opted for that route. It took hours only because our vehicle was not really capable of sustained highway speeds. So, we didn't really shave hours off the trip compared to taking the old road.
We had a really late lunch at the expressway food rest stop and bought takeaway from our nearest Shasha's before getting to the house. It was after 7:00 and dark by then.
