Sri Lanka 2012

Sri Lanka is a teardrop island on the southeast coast of India.  Our travel company, Sri Lanka In Style, set us up with a driver, (a combination body guard, guide, and interpreter) Jagath.  We arrived in Colombo, a city that combines luxury with a dirty underside, we had to be vigilant and cautious.  This trip focused on Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Muslim religions.  Some of our best experiences were in tea county in the central mountains near Kandy (where Buddha’s tooth is kept) and Yala a lowland natural area of elephants, peacocks, leopards, and a myriad of birds.

We visited a small temple in Colombo where Buddha spent time under a Bodhi tree.  We climbed Sigiriya, a temple compound on the top of a 600-foot-tall rock (constructed about 1500 years ago).  We witnessed fishers on the Indian Ocean, drove and walked to many Buddhist rock carvings, spent 2 days in Galle an old Portuguese fort on the southwest coast, walked through the ruins of Polonnaruwa and Thuparamaya, and of course, saw many depictions of my favorite Hindu God, Ganesh