Anuradhapura

It was a three and a half hour train trip starting at 0530 hr. We were up at 0400 and managed to get dressed packed and ripped off by a tuktuk driver by 0500. Lots of confusion finding our train but when we did , it turned into a pleasant comfortable train ride.
At Anuradhapura we met Lal a tuk tuk driver who was reasonably honest  and set us up for a tour of the ruins at some point in the future. 


Anyways this town is pretty sleepy compared to Colombo. The old town has most of the ruins and is protected parkland . There are ancient beautiful trees everywhere interspersed with all kinds of man made lagoons and wetlands. Three or four hundred years before Christ this town was the center of a bhuddhist empire. There were thousands of monks . One of the stupas here was the tallest man-made building in the world at the time.



We arrived at our small hotel and immediately regretted we hadn't booked for a longer stay . It turns out we are at the start of a massive four day holiday weekend and every pilgrim in Sri Lanka was coming to Anaradhapura. 
Our hotel owner kindly found us a room in the general area. These hotels are beside a man-made or altered lake and it is seething with water birds. Just a couple of hundred meters from our room there is a rookery of black headed ibises. The birds here seem to have little fear of man. There is a cause way going around the lake and you have to kick the white breasted water hens  out of the way to get by. It is an excellent spot to get pictures of common birds.










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