Travel Day 1121 – Polonnaruwa to Anuradhapura, SRI LANKA
After my almost ruin free day yesterday in Polonnaruwa, today I was off to the next ruined capital, named Anuradhapura…
Thuparama Dagoba in UNESCO Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka
Anuradhapura was actually the oldest, biggest and grandest of all the ancient capitals in Sri Lanka. The ruined leftovers of Anuradhapura were of course also a UNESCO enlisted World Heritage Site and they were supposed to be spread out over such a vast area that everyone had told me already it would be an impossible thing to cover the entire historic area within one single day. Even with the help of a bicycle one needed at least two days to see everything that Anuradhapura had offer, but of course the expensive entrance ticket was one-day only again…
So, even before I boarded the direct bus from Polonnaruwa to Anuradhapura, I had chatted with some of fellow travellers and they had given me some ideas of how best to tackle the historic sites. It was suggested that the entrance ticket of Anuradhapura was not really checked vigorously at all sites and so it would be possible to see some on the following day. The trick was mainly to see all the strictly controlled sites on the validity day of the Anuradhapura UNESCO Site ticket…
Jetavanarama Monastery Dagoba in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka
For me it meant that as soon as I had arrived in Anuradhapura and found a decently priced place to stay, I rented a bicycle and stated doing some homework again. I laid out all the must-see sights with the ticket on my map, figured out the best way to cycle and then set off to cruise around in order to do a little reality check. The biggest unknown for me were the distances. As the historical ruins in Polonnaruwa had been located within a very compact area close to town, it had been fairly easy to access everything within a 5 minute ride on the bike…
In Anuradhapura for example it took me about 20 minutes of biking alone to even teach the first historical site and then from there it took some time again to bike on-wards to the next. Instead of the one historical park, everything in Anuradhapura was rather grouped in different areas and each was supposed to have its own controlled access point. The main areas from south to north were: The Mahavihara with the Sri Maha Bodhi Tree, the Jetavanarama Monastery complex, the central Citadel and the extensive northern area containing the huge Abhayagiri Monastery ruins…
Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba in UNESCO Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka
Further to the south lay a couple of scattered other ruins and they were either free of charge, or entrance had to be paid separately, which left me less concerned about them today. I rather cruised around the 4 other areas and in the end I really only found that a ticket was checked thoroughly at the two monastery complexes. These happened to be the two areas where the entrance ticket could be bought as well and everything else seemed to be freely accessible. Actually even the Jetavanarama Monastery with it’s absolutely enormous dagoba could be accessed via a little pedestrian bridge if one cycled around the compound…
So after learning that I would focus on the monasteries tomorrow and after realizing that heavy rain clouds were moving-in, I rather used my time today to see the most visible sights of Anuradhapura, the Buddhist stupas called dagobas. By far the most impressive dagoba in size was the ruined red brick Jetavanarama Dagoba which once stood over 100 meters tall. The nicely restored, white Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba was already visible from afar due to its pointy spire and the atmospheric Thuparama Dagoba impressed rather with its unique composition of tilted columns. Circling this dagoba created constantly changing perspectives and in the end I must have circled it just one too many times as I got really, really soaked in my attempt to bike home quickly before the big thunderstorm. Well, tomorrow was going to be another, hopefully less rainy day…
Leave a Reply