Gayani Jayathilake

My husband and I are travel freaks. We love to travel to exotic places and discover routes on the way. Although we both had been to Polonnaruwa before, this trip was memorable and well worth the stay of four days.

In my previous article I wrote about Kaudulla Wild Life Sanctuary, which we visited in our third day of our amazing four day trip. So, this article is more like the beginning of my journey. I’m going back to the first day.

We started out from Matale. Our only doubt was the weather. Rainy season had started. When we started, the sky looked like it was saying, “you made the worst choice ever!”

It started to rain cats and dogs after passing Matale but amazingly, it stopped as quickly as it started. And the route to Polonnaruwa was amazing. Nalanda, Naula, Dambulla was explicit. Going along the Minneriya Wild Life Sanctuary always fascinated me. The boards along the road teased me with a small glimpse of what was in store for us.

The greenery along the way even smelt fresh and so good.

Saw a group of elephants on the way too!

When we got to Polonnaruwa, we had a hearty lunch and checked in to the splendid accommodation we had booked which was just close to (100m) Polonnaruwa ancient ruins. We went out in the evening to see some ruins of an ancient city. We started out at Rankoth Vehera.

Rankoth Vehera

This stupa was built by King Nissankamalla who ruled the country from 1187 to 1196. In Sinhalese, “ran” means gold, “kotha” is the name given to the pinnacle of a stupa, and “vehera” means stupa or temple. Thus, the name Rankoth Vehera can be roughly translated to English as “Gold Pinnacled Stupa. This stupa has a base diameter of 550 feet (170m) and a height of 108 feet (33m). Rankoth Vehera is said to be the largest stupa in Polonnaruwa. It is also the fourth largest stupa in Sri Lanka after Jetawanarama , Ruwanveli Seya, and Abhayagiriya in Anuradapura.

When we came out it rained cats and dogs and on the way to the car we got drenched from head to toe. At the beginning we walked down along the steps, but then we frantically ran to the car. I don’t know if we were trying to get less wet in the rain by walking slowly (trying to expose less of our bodies to the downpour) or if we were trying to catch less rain by running. But it was more entertaining than I expected. J Luckily the rain lasted about 10 minutes. We jumped from one water puddle to another to our next stop Lankathilaka, Kiri Vehera and Baddha Seema Prasadaya.

Lankathilaka

Lankathilaka Vihara was built by King Parakramabahu the Great and later restored by King Vijayabahu IV. At a glance we see two great walls that are 4m thick and 17m high for a narrow aisle. This aisle leads to an impressive 14m tall Buddha statue sadly now headless. When it comes to Buddhist Architecture this shrine is very different. Very contrastingly, the attention is not focused on the symbolic ‘dagoba’ structure but the Buddha statue within. Unfortunately we couldn’t take many classy shots on this fascinating work of art because of bad weather.

Too bad we had to rush over the two other places, kiri Vehera and Baddha Seema Prasadaya, since we were drenched and feeling very chilly by then.After this, we finished off Day 1 looking forward to being free of the drenched attire and in need of a nice, warm shower. Looking forward to publishing Day two very soon.