11th December, 2009
Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka
Polonnaruwa. An ancient city in the heart of Sri Lanka, filled with ruined temples and palaces, with crumbling relics of former civilisations to be found amidst the winding dusty paths. The perfect place to hire bicycles and spend an idyllic day meandering through the historic site, taking in the grandeur at our own pace and under our own steam.
At least, that was the plan. The reality was just a little different.
To begin with, after half an hour it started raining. Now a little rain is ok, but when you’re on a bicycle pedalling across dirt tracks, rain soon causes a few problems. After a remarkably short time our backs were coated in red muddy splashes, vision was becoming an issue with the rain driving into our faces and we were narrowly avoiding plunging into the ever increasing puddles as the roads morphed into muddy swamps. Then, possibly due to the aforesaid lack of vision, we took a wrong turn and ended up pedalling miles to reach a supremely underwhelming pile of rocks rather than the magnificent temple we had been expecting. At this point, Paul’s bike, along with his patience, suffered a slight breakdown (ie. the gears wouldn’t change, the chain locked up and the thing in general just didn’t want to work. I'm taking about the bike, though Paul wasn't much better.). It may not sound like much, but when you’re cold, wet and tired in the middle of nowhere, these things start to get to you just a bit; I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the bike dangling from a tree after what Paul was saying about it. Then to top it all off, once we eventually did find shelter under a tree, we managed to park ourselves right on top of a nest of ants that wanted to feast on our feet for their afternoon tea. Needless to say, the trip was less than successful. After stubbornly sitting on a poncho for an hour, obstinately remaining in the way of the Sri Lankan tourists in our efforts to stay out of the rain, we were found by the guy who had rented us the bikes and returned to town by tuk tuk. By this point we had been soaked to the skin for a number of hours, so it’s perhaps not surprising that after attempting to enjoy a museum, then navigating local transport back to our guest house in Sigiriya, I had developed a fever and spent the night sick and shivering. It seemed a fitting end to our doomed day visiting Polonnaruwa.
No comments:
Post a Comment