Day 62 - Every full moon day is a Buddhist religious day in Sri Lanka and these are observed as national holidays. This is already the second full moon of this trip here. Like many others, and just like last month, we took a trip to visit an ancient site. We visited Maligatenna Raja Maha Vihara.
We'd signed up for a PickMe car rental and driver for 8:15 am. It simply never arrived with no cancellation notice whatsoever. We will not use the homegrown rideshare app for such trip planning again. Jay's elder sister knew a company and we were in business after a short wait. The vehicle arrived at 9:00 am and we were at our chosen temple in the Gampaha district in just 45 minutes, but that's partly because the driver drove too fast.
In 2019, we visited three close temples on a Poya day. This was one of them. The main working temple is near the foot of a mountain. In the main use area, a monk had a sermon in progress under an extraordinarily enormous rock. The cave temple would hold a hundred devotees. Most activities were occurring in this spot.
The walk up the mountain is what we'd neglected to do on our last visit. We expected to visit just this one temple today and thusly figured we'd make the hike. It was not a long way but a very steep hike. This, in fact, is the highest point in this district of Sri Lanka. Some people we carrying building blocks or sand for some continued renovation at the top of the mountain.
The area is ancient. Word has it that the revered 'Tooth Relic' now in Kandy, was hidden here for a while during the Portuguese period. Another story goes, in this area, a local monk after living and meditating for seven years achieved Nervana.
Getting to the top was quite a workout. I've always said that one shouldn't begin travelling in old age as it becomes more physically difficult to do many things; one is climbing mountains!
It is nice to see such a variety of people using the holiday to get to know the many religious sites scattered all over Sri Lanka. As such places are often amazing geological sites, it is always worth it for simply the pure enjoyment of the locations.
