Sirigiya

An even shinier new driver today in an even newer and shinier Toyota Prius, took us to the palace at Sirigiya, about 10km east of the hotel.

This is a fabulous archaeological site, comparable in scale and herculean effort to Chichen Itza and Angkor Watt.

The site is a huge overhanging isolated outcrop of garnetiferous hornblende gneiss rising abruptly some hundred or so metres from the plain below. At ground level concentric moats enclose the remains of water pleasure gardens from the fifth century AD. Then you begin to climb marble steps through a boulder garden until you reach the rock outcrop itself.

Many boulders have rows of shallow step marks carved into them as footings for brick walls, and sinuous drip-ledges, shallow vermiform runnels to divert water from trickling down overhangs into inhabited spaces beneath.

Increasingly steep flights of steps lead to a steel spiral staircase bolted to the vertical rock surface. This climbs upwards to an overhang which forms a gallery for ancient paintings of apsaras on the rock wall.

You then pass along a corridor where the smooth plasterwork is inscribed by old graffiti, to a rock shoulder from whence the final steel staircases ascend to the summit palace. This climb feels quite exposed, but has fabulous views over the deeply wooded countryside below.

At the top are the remains of a surprisingly small brick palace, a water tank carved out of the impervious gneiss, and various ancillary buildings. A throne is also entirely carved from the rock. The views are stunning in all directions. The quantity of bricks which have been carried to this height is astounding.

Christine identified that what we were standing on was an inselberg. We had previously looked at the valley shapes around Ella and Nuwara Eliya and thought they showed features of glacial origin, but dismissed the idea as Sri Lanka was far too close to the equator to support a Pleistocene ice sheet. What we suddenly realised was that the landscape here must be far, far older than that. The rock is two to three thousand million years old, the landforms we see now are indeed glacial, but formed during the Carboniferous glaciation which deposited the tillites of South Africa. At this time Sri Lanka would have been much further from the Equator.

We later visited the excellent site museum which seemed to confirm the theory.

After such a lot of climbing it was time for lunch and the driver took us to a very well patronised establishment for delicious rice and curry.

The afternoon belonged to the swimming pool and planning the last stage of the Indian tour.