We ate breakfast with the other guests; a British couple who were leaving that day, a German couple Klaus and Gisene and a giant Sri Lankan squirrel who seemed proficient at enticing guests to give him some fruit.
We departed for Polonnaruwa around 9:30am on the scooter, stopping for about 15 minutes at a roadside shelter to miss a passing rain shower. Stopping in Kaduruwela, we bought sarongs, which were often required at many of the temples we had visited - it seemed like it was time we had our own to save the 'embarrassment' of the loaners they gave out to tourists - ironically, any of the temples we visited later in the trip didn't require legs to be covered up, but we both have a lovely souvenir nonetheless!
At the ancient city of Polonnaruwa, we rented bikes to get around easily and spent the afternoon, hopping on and off at each stop of interest, including; the Royal Palace and Baths, the Citadel and Rankot Vehera. The sites were more interesting than those we saw at Anuradhapura. The semi-circular moonstone is a unique feature of Sinhalese architecture, placed at the bottom of stairs and at entrances.
On our ride home, we saw a wild elephant on the roadside who seemed to have just wandered out of the forest and was grazing just a few feet away as we passed by.
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| dinner is served! |
We had a cooking class that evening at the guest house. Dudley, the owner and his wife, assisted Gisene, Klaus, Jordan and myself to prepare six different curries and a Gotu Kola sambal (salad), adding four more curries that they had prepared. We had the chance to sample all of them for supper that evening. It was an amazing array of flavours, pumpkin, sweet potato, beetroot, okra, enoki mushroom ambarella, eggplant and banana curries and a dahl among them. |
| one of five pups with their mum |
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