Sri Lanka – Bam! 5-14-14

So, I’m trying to catch you guys up on where I’ve been and what I’ve seen since I didn’t have the opportunity to post much over the last several weeks….

I took a quick jaunt down from India to Sri Lanka…. Let’s see, that was May 3 through May 8.  Long story on how I ended up there… Do you want to know?  Uhhh, ok… Siggy and I had planned to do a Vipassana class (that’s the more intense 10 days silent) there in Sri Lanka before we decided to do the 10 day silent course in Dharamsala… Sri Lanka won’t issue a visa until you have an outgoing flight, so I booked myself weeks a flight from Sri Lanka to Bali weeks earlier…  It was a pretty expensive flight, so even though Siggy and I didn’t feel we were ready for Vipassana and decided to cancel it, I still had my flights booked…  Lesson learned Eryn, never book too far in advance… When you’re following your intuition, things change alot…  For some reason Siggy didn’t book her flights when I did, probably had something to do with bad wifi…

Anyhow, that’s how I ended up going there for such a short amount of time… I kept moving my departure flight from India further and further back, because I really didn’t want to leave, but figured I’d at least give myself a few days in Sri Lanka…

So, here you have a small snapshot of my time in Sri Lanka… Bam – Cool stuff comin’ at ya!!

First I visited Pinnawalle Village about 2 hours inland from Colombo on the coast where I arrived.  They’re known for their elephant orphanage and I found a guest house on elephant bath road…  This is the road that all the elephants walk down to get to the river every morning so they can take their baths… What an amazing morning…  Beautiful creatures, they are…  Check it out…

After my day at Pinnawalle village, I decided to go further inland another 2 hours drive to this place called Sigiriya.  It’s another small village whose main attraction is Lion’s Rock, an incredible column of rock protruding nearly 700 ft. from the earth that a king once built his palace on top of…  The palace itself was abandoned after the kings death, and has since been demolished, but was used also as Buddhist monastery for some time (Remember in these parts of the world, the Buddhist influence is everywhere)… It is now on the World Heritage Site and is one of the most ancient examples of urban planning.  Of course I had to climb it and take lots of cool pictures 🙂

From my hotel – Great view, huh?

Wow!!!

There was one area, like a cave, inside the rock that had all these amazing paintings from centuries earlier…

Many monks in training (I guess that’s what you call them) were visiting that day…

Beautiful gardens all around…

The king had these lion’s feet carved out of the side of the rock to signify his power and dominance…

Those monkeys are following me from country to country, I think…

After Sigiriya, it was back to the airport…  Off, off, off I go to Indonesia and Gili Gede island…  Stay tuned for that post…  See you soon 🙂