For my last vacation I got chance to visit the amazing island known as the pearl of the Indian Ocean, historically called Ceylon or Taprobana by the great astrologer and geographer Ptolemy. With amazingly comfortable climate and the diverse biodiversity, it was one of the best places on Earth to be on. The people were absolutely friendly and there were a lot of places to see and enjoy. In my trip to Sri Lanaka, I got to visit several places in the country including one of the world heritage sites called “sigiriya” which is translated as the rock of the lion. It was a really amazing experience that I had and I sure do like every bit of it. So let me start my story.
I arrived in Sri Lanka at the Katunayake airport in the capital of the country called Colombo. Colombo was really hot at the time and I was able to hire a car to the hotel Hilton. The hotel Hilton was a fabulous place to stay in and from there I was able to hire a car for my tour. I had no exact plan as to where I should go and what the best places to visit would be, so what I did was I purchased one of these little booklets about travel in SL and I was amazed by some of the pictures in it. Anyway with my limited time span and all there was hardly time for me to visit all the places that appeared agreeable on the book. So I had to choose a couple of places that fit in my time schedule and I chose to visit Sigiriya.
Passing the town of Kandy and then Matale, I finally arrived at the lion rock. I was amazed by the size of the stone and I was thinking to myself how on Earth they built a castle on top of it. Oh yes, I forgot to mention, on the giant rock was a castle that a king took shelter on and the castle even had a pond and a water supply!, and it was really hard for me to understand how the ancient technologies managed to take the water up to such a height without any pump as such. They say that the ancients used capillarity within small water pores within the stone in taking the water up but the technology was simply unbelievable. Another amusing thing for me was how they took the material up because if it was done manually by hand, the amount of effort that was put in would have been immense. There was a path constructed mostly with iron structures drilled into the stone that helped us reach the top of the stone. On the way up there were caves in which we saw beautiful drawings of Sigiriya frescos of topless beauties that probably entertained the King. At the top all that remains now is the pond and remnants of the castle that I think once would have been firm and strong. It was one of the best place in SL to be and I’ve no surprise as to why the place should be considered as a world heritage.
Author’s Bio
Teresa Kent is a creative writer and a geologist. She loves to write articles in different genres. She has good experiences on blogs. Currently she is writing an article about Business class flights to Dubai and her own travel experiences.
