What are you, Stupa?

Above, Stupa!

After Unawatuna, we traveled north back up the west coast, stopping at Hikkaduwa with hopes of revisiting the surf scene. Poseidon was whipping up some massive troubles though, roiling the ocean into a series of massive waves that flooded the beach. The sand was staked out with red danger flags, and not even the local surfers would venture out under the threat of serious undertow and rips.

So we rolled on, ever so very, very slowly via train. We sat, dripping sweat, desperate for a breeze as the train inched north on a six and a half hour jaunt. It was very tempting to hop out of the train when it inevitably crawled to a halt and just start walking (at a brisk pace, we might have even gotten there faster). Our destination was the city of Anuradhapura, once the capital of ancient SL, it is now a sleepy town notable for its collection of impressive ruins.



Jetavana Stupa and a tiny me.

The most spectacular sights are the three large stupas (or dagobas, your choice) that pop up out of the land like big pop-a-matic bubbles (“Trouble” anyone?). These Buddhist Temples are dome-shaped and sit atop a square base. The Jetavana Stupa is really very old and very large. Made out of an estimated 90 million bricks, it was, for a time, the third largest structure in existence, the two front runners being the Pyramids at Giza. Also at Anuradhapura is the Temple of the Bodhi tree, which has a Bodhi tree allegedly grown from a cutting of the original Bodhi tree. A very active sacred site, the tree is not much to look at but the rituals taking place were worth seeing.

The next day, we traveled a few hours more to visit Polonnaruwa, which is another similarly ruined city. The difference between the two sites is that A- has the big impressive stupas but the details are long gone, while P- has less massive structures but more stone work and art still in decent shape. P- was never quite the megalopolis that A- was, which is why it didn’t get so entirely sacked by repeated invasions.

Below, ruins. Polonnaruwa


These invasions were sometimes inner power struggles amongst Sinhalese royalty ( they made a practice of killing and dethroning one another, a bad habit of many royal families), but more often were battles with the invading Tamils from India. It seems that way back when, there was a land bridge between India and Lanka, and some people came, and settled down, and then they didn’t want other people to come in and take over, which inevitably happened. So over thousands of years, the Sinhalese remained miffed about the Tamil's invade-y ways, and the Tamils that had been around for a couple centuries got annoyed that the Sinhalese insisted on everyone being Buddhist, so, both parties attempt to destroy one another every once in a while, which has been the status quo for the last couple millennia. There is currently peace on the island, but the bad blood here seems too ancient and hopelessly entrenched for everyone to just forgive and forget.