Travel Day 1120 – Polonnaruwa, SRI LANKA
After my busy day of seeing all the many ruins of Polonnaruwa yesterday, I really didn’t feel like doing much today and I really didn’t feel like seeing more ruins…
Reclining UNESCO Buddha of Gal Vihara in Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka
Overall it seemed to me that the only place I visited yesterday that couldn’t be considered a ruin was Gal Vihara in the northern part of the UNESCO enlisted Ancient City of Polonnaruwa area. Gal Vihara consisted of 4 separate Buddha statues, all carved out of one single piece of granite. The Buddhas were considered to be the high point of Sinhalese rock carving and especially the Buddha housed inside a rock temple reminded me of the amazing Temples of Mamallapuram that I had seen in India…
My personal favorite of Gal Vihara was the reclining Buddha who almost looked like camouflaged due to the busy texture of the rock. It seemed to me that the Buddha was somehow losing his three-dimensional form when looked at from a certain angle and without any visible recognition of a shadow, the Buddha was simply disappearing back into the same rock that he had initially come form. This image seemed to be the perfect representation of what life really was all about…
Potgul Vihara Ruins in Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka
Also when I visited the air-conditioned Archaeological Museum of Polonnaruwa yesterday during my lunch break, I realized that there were actually a lot of other ruins around that were not even part of the protected UNESCO compound. There seemed to be a lot or ruins scattered around the Bendiwewa Lake which consisted initially of three different water tanks for the supply of the ancient capital of Polonnaruwa. But best of all, there was even an island inside the lake witch used to have the summer palace of the king on it…
So even if my resolution for this day had been not to see any more ruins in the heat, I still was tempted by the afternoon to stroll along the lake and try to find some of the scattered ruins that I had seen in the museum. The most interesting ruins were probably the ones of the southern group which lay about a 20 to 30 minute walk away, along the lake. There I found the quite unusual Potgul Vihara ruin which was representing what was believed to be an ancient library, housed inside a hollow dagoba…
Sunset over Bendiwewa Lake in Plonnaruwa, Sri Lanka
The nearby statue depicting a person, possibly one of the former kings, on the other hand was not really that impressive after seeing the nice carvings of Gal Vihara yesterday. What was nice on the other hand was the walk along the lake. The evening time had been a good choice to be out and about. On the one hand the temperature seemed quite comfortable, but on the other the sun was slowly setting right above the Bendiwewa Lake, providing me with a nice ending of a much more relaxed day than yesterday had been…
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