Anuradhapura

We went by tuktuk from Sigiriya to anaradapura, which took about 2-1/2 hours, which was about an hour too long. We intended to go see the 2,000 year old bodhi tree and the evening ceremony, but had little energy. When you have a long drive in a tuktuk you feel as if you were the one driving it, or at least keeping it on the road. The problem is that tuktuks have a imposed speed limit, but cars and trucks an go much faster, motor bikes too, so the tuktuk is constantly pulling over to the bumpier part of the road. So, we read and slept and had dinner at our hotel - - nice typical Sri Lanka meal. The next day, we hired a tuktuk for the whole tour of the ruins and temples and the bodi tree. Although these ruins are older and cover more hectares, we didn't find them as interesting, probably because they are older and in worse shape. But the ruins of the monastery were interesting. That long trough in the photo was the rice serving 'bowl' for the 5000 monks who lived there.