A Car Rapidly Backing Up is a Warning Sign

Perfect Lotus Shaped Bathing Pool 

We left the giant Dabogoses of Anuradhapura and headed for the medieval city of Polonnaruwa. This city like Anuradhapura, is completely dead. It is ruins scattered over a huge site. You actually drive from ruin to ruin.

These ruins are located in the jungle. The roads in Sri Lanka (in fact the entire infrastructure) appears far better than India. We expected Sri Lanka to be like Southern India which is its closest (and only) neighbor. It isn’t at all like Southern India. It is cleaner, it has better infrastructure and the roads are far better and much less crowded. It also lacks the vibrancy, noise, color and disorganization of Southern India. It is sort of like India on Thorozene.

As you drive through the jungle, there are signs about wild elephant crossings. Also there are signs about monitor lizard crossings. The wild elephants are quite dangerous to humans and not to be taken lightly.

We met our guide, who Cathy and I decided was drunk at the Polonnaruwa museum. He walked us meticulously through the museum, explaining everything. All of the exhibits were marked do not touch. He touched everyone, either as a mark of independence from the rules or because he knew from his years of working on these excavations, that he could touch the objects and not damage them. It turns out we misjudged him, he wasn’t drunk, he was an excellent guide.

I won’t try to describe the site, except it reminded us as a cross between the Roman Forum and Angkor Watt. There are many, many giant statues of the Buddha. Size apparently matters, and many of them are very large. There are ruins of the many Buddhist Monasteries and kingly palaces. Much of this is on and under land recently excavated Like Machu Pichu in Peru, no one knew of these ruins for hundreds of years.

At one of the last sites, we were driving down a basically one lane dirt road. All of sudden we saw a car in front of us heading backward towards us. Our driver, Michael, quickly put our car in reverse and the two cars, quickly drove backward in tandem. It turns out a wild elephant had been spotted. They are extremely dangerous, and neither driver would proceed, until they knew the elephant had moved on and the coarse was clear.

Later on, after dark, as we drove home in the dark, we rounded a bend, and a giant wild elephant was standing in the on-coming traffics lane. We scooted by the elephant safely, (no time for pictures). On the other side of the road, motorcyles and car came to a quick halt, as they knew none of them was safe until the elephant wandered off by himself. It is amazing to actually see these huge beasts interacting with people, not in a zoo or circus where you see them docile, but it the wild where they are supreme, and humans are wary of them. By the way they have both types of wild elephants in Sri Lanka, Indian and African.

We saw one more wild elephant, standing by the side of the road. Moral of the story: If someone tells you there is a wild elephant nearby, get the hell out of there ASAP!

We returned to the hotel, soaked with sweat and exhausted from climbing in the heat across these ancient sites.  We had a wonderful massage and dinner. Tomorrow another adventure.