Ritigala & Aukana

Now that we are all nice and relaxed and calmed down, we spotted a peacock on the side of the road.

Tree huts are a feature of the landscape here. Farmers sleep in these around harvest time ready to scare off elephants or other crop destroying animals.

On arrival at Ritigala the local drunk offered his services as a guide. It was before midday and this guy was absolutely steaming. As we didn't have a map and the jungle looked pretty dense we thought we would let him lead us around so we could make jokes about how intoxicated he was.

The name Ritigala is though to mean safety rock referring to the solitude of monastic complex on the hill.

Here he is pointing out birds to Claire.....he did that alot.

Without his help we might not have found the urinal stone. Finely carved, the story goes that the monks would slash on the stones in order to demonstrate their contempt for worldly goods.

This lizard wanted to say hello.

Upon reaching the big tree our guide became a little edgy and didn't wish to progress due to wild animals and dense vegetation. We think that Jason's tree monster freaked him out. We did get him to show us some other ruins on the way down that he might not have visited had he been sober.

We stopped for curd (buffalo yoghurt) and honey on the way to the Aukana Buddha. It transpires the not very honey tasting honey is actually Keri Peni from the Kitul palm.

The Aukana Buddha seemed to take along time to reach. We think our driver got totally lost hence the reason he really didn't want to go there.

The 12m high Buddha has a 5th century AD legend of a race to sculpt the perfect Buddha between a teacher and his disciple. The Aukana Buddha is the winning entry and the Sassuruwa Buddha a further 10kms into the jungle would surely have made our driver cry so we didn't get to see second place. Sources have actually dated it to the 12 or13th century AD. It is still an amazing place.

An African monk pays his respects before we discuss in perfect English how fine the statue is.

It was after 3pm and the Buddha was tiring of the endless stream of pilgrims taking photos. Or maybe this was a pose he adopted when they built the ugly brick, railway bridge look-a-like covering over the top during the 60's, which has thankful now been taken down before it fell down.

We saw a huge water monitor during the day but this slightly smaller lizard is not actually a water monitor according to our very lost driver.

Apparently their tails are very dangerous. mmmmm.