Sri Lanka 2018

(Six seconds.) https://www.facebook.com/mary.a.mohanraj/videos/10159081623389616/

  https://www.facebook.com/mary.a.mohanraj/videos/10159082011664616/   I wish I’d been able to record more of our Sigiriya guide (Rajasinha “Raju“ Bandaranaike) — he gave us permission to record him and publish it (and we paid extra for that), but he kept speaking without warning, and then it felt rude to make him repeat what he’d just said. I

  Okay, so brace yourself for some breathless colonial archeology. “This 1898 article tells the remarkable story of the archaeological excavations at Sigiriya in Ceylon. Sigiriya was a large rocky outcrop that could be seen for miles around. It had long been thought to be out of bounds and haunted by demons by the local

These trees!     It’s unnerving, sometimes, realizing you’re looking at stones that were cut and shaped more than 1500 years ago. The king demands water gardens — water gardens he shall have!     It’s a hot, fairly dry part of the country, but if you’re king, you can make the water come to

  You enter Sigiriya from the far left of this map, where pleasure gardens lie at ground level. Then you progress through the gardens, through one of the gates, and climb 1200 steps up the Lion Rock, past the Mirror Wall and stunning frescoes of the lovely topless ladies, to the top of King Kasyapa’s

So we’re going to go through my visit to Sigiriya in some detail, as I’m working on a Sigiriya-related project right now, so this is also serving as my research notes. What project, you ask? A video game! I’m partnering with Kel Bachus‘s Rad Magpie game company, to develop a Sri Lankan-themed video game. This weekend

We made it to Sigiriya! At which point, we left Kavi in the van with the driver. I felt a little ridiculous doing so, but she had absolutely no interest in trying to climb 1000+ steps. Kavi really just wanted to read her book, and would’ve been happiest just staying in bed. But I knew

After the Temple, Kavi was pretty tired, but still needed dinner. I was hoping her first tuk-tuk ride would wake her up… (It did!)