Where the
Dhamma landed.

North to Anurādhapura

Met at the airport and driven to Anurādhapura, four and a half hours north. Evening briefing on conduct and dress. Nothing else.

Mihintale, from the bottom of the steps

Out early for the 1,840 granite steps, which rise in broad shallow flights through the ruins of the monastery that grew on the hill. At the top: the Ambasthala Dāgaba, built where the king and Mahinda met, the Mahinda Guhāva where he is said to have slept, and the summit rock with the Sela Cetiya — the fifteenth of the sixteen sacred places.

On the lower terraces, the Kaludiya Pokuna forest monastery with its rock-cut bathhouse, and the ruins of what is often described as the oldest hospital in the world — including the stone beheth oruwa, a medicinal immersion trough carved to the shape of a body.

The Bodhi tree, the great stūpas

Jaya Sri Mahā Bodhi before five, for the chanting — the tree grown from a cutting of the Bodh Gayā tree, brought by the bhikkhunī Saṅghamittā and tended continuously since the third century BCE. Then Thūpārāmaya, the island's first stūpa. Late afternoon at Ruwanwelisāya.

Abhayagiri, and the finest moonstone on the island

A morning in the Abhayagiri complex — five thousand monks at its height — with the Samādhi Buddha, the twin ponds of Kuttam Pokuna and their surviving filtration chambers, and the Sandakaḍa Pahaṇa moonstone with its concentric bands of flame, elephant, horse, lion, bull and lotus. Afternoon at Jetavanārāmaya.

Ritigala — the monks who left

Out to Ritigala, a mountain ridge rising 600 metres out of flat dry-zone scrub, where the Pansukūlika — the rag-robe ascetics who rejected the wealth of the great city monasteries — built a hermitage of long straight meditation walkways, stone platforms and double-platform cells. It is inside a strict nature reserve, it is almost always empty, and it is the counterweight to everything you saw in Anurādhapura.

Afternoon: Aukana, where a twelve-metre standing Buddha in abhaya mudrā was cut from a single face of living granite, still joined to the rock behind it. Night at Sīgiriya.

Polonnaruwa and Gal Vihāra

East to Polonnaruwa, the second capital: the quadrangle, the Vatadāge, the Lankātilaka, and then Gal Vihāra, where four twelfth-century figures — seated, standing, and a seven-metre reclining Buddha entering parinibbāna — were cut from one continuous face of granite. It is the best sculpture in the country and it is out in the open air.

Dambulla, and the painted ceiling

Raṅgiri Dambulla: five caves under a granite overhang, in continuous use as a monastery for twenty-two centuries, holding some 150 statues — 153 of them images of the Buddha — and around 2,100 square metres of painting applied directly to the rock — the ceiling of Cave 2 following every contour of the stone above your head. Then the climb up Pidurangala or a walk at the base of Sīgiriya, and on to Kandy.

The tooth relic, and south

The morning Thevāva pūjā at the Sri Dalada Māligāwa, where the tooth relic of the Buddha has been kept since the sixteenth century and where drummers still announce the opening of the inner shrine three times a day. Then the drive to the airport.