Sigiriya and around

Around 15km northeast of Dambulla, the spectacular citadel of SIGIRIYA rises sheer and impregnable out of the denuded plains of the dry zone, sitting atop a huge outcrop of gneiss rock towering 200m above the surrounding countryside. The shortest-lived but the most extraordinary of all Sri Lanka’s medieval capitals, Sigiriya (“Lion Rock”) was declared a World Heritage Site in 1982 and is the country’s most memorable single attraction – a remarkable archeological site made unforgettable by its dramatic setting.

Brief history of Sigiriya

Inscriptions found in the caves that honeycomb the base of the rock indicate that Sigiriya served as a place of religious retreat as far back as the third century BC, when Buddhist monks established refuges here. It wasn’t until the fifth century AD, however, that Sigiriya rose briefly to pre-eminence in Sri Lankan affairs, following the power struggle that succeeded the reign of Dhatusena (455–473) of Anuradhapura. Dhatusena had two sons, Mogallana, by the most pre-eminent of his various queens, and Kassapa, his son by a lesser consort. Upon hearing that Mogallana had been declared heir to the throne, Kassapa rebelled, driving Mogallana into exile in India and imprisoning his father. Threatened with death if he refused to reveal the whereabouts of the state treasure, Dhatusena agreed to show his errant son its location if he was permitted to bathe one final time in the great Kalawewa Tank, whose creation he had overseen. Standing in the tank, Dhatusena poured its water through his hands and told Kassapa that the water, and the water alone, was all the treasure he possessed. Kassapa, none too impressed, had his father walled up in a chamber and left him to die.

Mogallana, meanwhile, vowed to return from India and reclaim his inheritance. Kassapa, preparing for the expected invasion, constructed a new residence on top of the 200m-high Sigiriya Rock – a combination of pleasure palace and impregnable fortress, which he intended would emulate the legendary abode of Kubera, the god of wealth, while a new city was established around its base. According to tradition, the entire extraordinary structure was built in just seven years, from 477 to 485.

The long-awaited invasion finally materialized in 491, Mogallana having raised an army of Tamil mercenaries to fight his cause. Despite the benefits of his impregnable fortress, Kassapa, in an act of fatalistic bravado, descended from his rocky eminence and rode boldly out on an elephant at the head of his troops to meet the attackers on the plains below. Unfortunately for Kassapa, his elephant took fright and bolted at the height of the battle. His troops, thinking he was retreating, fell back and left him cut off. Facing certain capture and defeat, Kassapa killed himself.

Following Mogallana’s reconquest, Sigiriya was handed over to the Buddhist monks, after which its caves once again became home to religious ascetics seeking peace and solitude. The site was finally abandoned in 1155, after which it remained largely forgotten until modern times.

Sigiriya Rock

You’ll need two or three hours to explore Sigiriya Rock; it’s best to visit in the early morning or late afternoon, when the crowds are less dense and the temperature is cooler – late afternoon also brings out the rock’s extraordinary ochre colouration, like a kind of Asian Ayers Rock. The site is best avoided at weekends (especially Sun) and on public holidays, when its narrow staircases and walkways can become unbearably congested. The ascent of the rock is a stiff climb but less gruelling than you might imagine when standing at the bottom of the towering cliff-face, and sufferers from vertigo might find some sections unpleasant. Guides can usually be hired at the entrance, though it pays to ask a few questions to check their knowledge and level of English before committing to anyone.

The site divides into two sections: the rock itself, on whose summit Kassapa established his principal palace; and the area around the base of the rock, home to elaborate royal pleasure gardens as well as various monastic remains pre-dating Kassapa’s era. The entire site is a compelling combination of wild nature and high artifice – exemplified by the delicate paintings of the Sigiriya damsels which cling to the rock’s rugged flanks. Interestingly, unlike Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, there’s no sign here of large-scale monasteries or religious structures – Kassapa’s Sigiriya appears to have been an almost entirely secular affair, perhaps a reflection of its unhallowed origins.

The Water Gardens

From the entrance, a wide, straight path arrows towards the rock, following the line of an imaginary east–west axis around which the whole site is laid out. This entire side of the rock is protected by a pair of broad moats, though the Outer Moat is now largely dried out. Crossing the Inner Moat, enclosed within two-tiered walls, you enter the Water Gardens. The first section comprises four pools set in a square which create a small island at their centre when full, connected by pathways to the surrounding gardens. The remains of pavilions can be seen in the rectangular areas to the north and south of the pools.

Beyond here is the small but elaborate Fountain Garden. Features include a serpentine miniature “river” and limestone-bottomed channels and ponds, two of which preserve their ancient fountain sprinklers. These work on a simple pressure-and-gravity principle and still spurt out modest plumes of water after heavy rain – after almost 1500 years of disuse, all that was needed to restore the fountains to working order was to clear the water channels that feed them.

The Boulder Gardens

Beyond the Water Gardens the main path begins to climb up through the Boulder Gardens, constructed out of the huge boulders that lie tumbled around the foot of the rock. Many of the boulders are notched with lines of holes – they look rather like rock-cut steps, but in fact they were used as footings to support the brick walls or timber frames of the numerous buildings which were built against or on top of the boulders.

The gardens were also the centre of Sigiriya’s monastic activity before and after Kassapa: there are around twenty rock shelters hereabouts which were used by monks, some containing inscriptions dating from between the third century BC and the first century AD. The caves would originally have been plastered and painted, and traces of this decoration can still be seen in a few places; you’ll also notice the dripstone ledges that were carved around the entrances to many of the caves to prevent water from running into them. The Deraniyagala Cave, just to the left of the path shortly after it begins to climb up through the gardens (no sign), has a well-preserved dripstone ledge and traces of old paintings including the faded remains of various apsara figures (celestial nymphs) very similar to the famous Sigiriya Damsels further up the rock. On the opposite side of the main path up the rock, a side path leads to the Cobra Hood Cave, named for its uncanny resemblance to that snake’s head. The cave preserves traces of lime plaster, floral decoration and a very faint inscription on the ledge in archaic Brahmi script dating from the second century BC.

Follow the path up the hill behind the Cobra Hood Cave and up through “Boulder Arch no. 2” (as it’s signed), then turn left to reach the so-called Audience Hall. The wooden walls and roof have long since disappeared, but the impressively smooth floor, created by chiselling the top off a single enormous boulder, remains, along with a 5m-wide “throne”, also cut out of the solid rock. The hall is popularly claimed to have been Kassapa’s audience hall, though it’s more likely to have served a purely religious function, with the empty throne representing the Buddha. The small Asana Cave on the path en route to the Audience Hall retains colourful splashes of various paintings on its ceiling (though now almost obliterated by idiotic contemporary graffiti) and is home to another throne, while a couple more thrones can be found carved into nearby rocks.

Terrace Gardens

From the Asana Cave, you can carry on back to the main path, then head on up through “Boulder Arch no. 1”. The path – now a sequence of walled-in steps – begins to climb steeply through the Terrace Gardens, a series of rubble-retaining brick and limestone terraces that stretch to the base of the rock itself, from where you get the first of an increasingly majestic sequence of views back down below.

The Sigiriya Damsels

Shortly after reaching the base of the rock, two incongruous nineteenth-century metal spiral staircases lead to and from a sheltered cave in the sheer rock face that holds Sri Lanka’s most famous sequence of frescoes, popularly referred to as the Sigiriya Damsels (no flash photography). These busty beauties were painted in the fifth century and are the only non-religious paintings to have survived from ancient Sri Lanka; they’re now one of the island’s most iconic – and most relentlessly reproduced – images. It’s thought that these frescoes would originally have covered an area some 140m long by 40m high, though only 21 damsels now survive out of an original total of some five hundred (a number of paintings were destroyed by a vandal in 1967, while a few of the surviving pictures are roped off out of sight). The exact significance of the paintings is unclear: they were originally thought to depict Kassapa’s consorts, though according to modern art historians the most convincing theory is that they are portraits of apsaras (celestial nymphs), which would explain why they are shown from the waist up only, rising out of a cocoon of clouds. The portrayal of the damsels is strikingly naturalistic, showing them scattering petals and offering flowers and trays of fruit – similar in a style to the famous murals at the Ajanta Caves in India, and a world away from the much later and more stylized murals at nearby Dambulla. An endearingly human touch is added by the slips of the brush visible here and there: one damsel has three hands, while another sports an extra nipple.

The Mirror Wall

Just beyond the damsels, the pathway runs along the face of the rock, bounded on one side by the Mirror Wall. This was originally coated in highly polished plaster made from lime, egg white, beeswax and wild honey; sections of the original plaster survive and still retain a marvellously lustrous sheen. The wall is covered in graffiti, the oldest dating from the seventh century, in which early visitors recorded their impressions of Sigiriya and, especially, the nearby damsels – even after the city was abandoned, Sigiriya continued to draw a steady stream of tourists curious to see the remains of Kassapa’s fabulous pleasure-dome. Taken together, the graffiti form a kind of early medieval visitors’ book, and the 1500 or so decipherable comments give important insights into the development of the Sinhalese language and script.

Beyond the Mirror Wall, the path runs along a perilous-looking iron walkway bolted onto the sheer rock-face. From here you can see a huge boulder below, propped up on stone slabs. The popular explanation is that, in the event of attack, the slabs would have been knocked away, causing the boulder to fall onto the attackers below, though it’s more likely that the slabs were designed to stop the boulder inadvertently falling down over the cliff.

The Lion Platform

Continuing up the rock, a flight of limestone steps climbs steeply up to the Lion Platform, a large spur projecting from the north side of the rock, just below the summit. From here, a final staircase, its base flanked by two enormous paws carved out of the rock, leads up across all that remains of a gigantic lion statue – the final path to the summit apparently led directly into its mouth. Visitors to Kassapa were, one imagines, suitably impressed both by the gigantic conceit of the thing and also by the heavy symbolism – lions were the most important emblem of Sinhalese royalty, and the beast’s size was presumably meant to reflect Kassapa’s prestige and buttress his questionable legitimacy to the throne.

The whole section of rock-face above is scored with countless notches and grooves which once supported steps up to the summit: in a supreme irony, it appears that Kassapa was afraid of heights, and it’s thought that these original steps would have been enclosed by a high wall – though this isn’t much comfort for latter-day sufferers from vertigo, who have to make the final ascent to the summit up a narrow iron staircase attached to the bare rock-face.

The summit

After the tortuous path up, the summit seems huge. This was the site of Kassapa’s palace, and almost the entire area was originally covered with buildings. Only the foundations now remain, though, and it’s difficult to make much sense of it all – the main attraction is the fabulous views down to the Water Gardens and out over the surrounding countryside. The Royal Palace itself is now just a plain, square brick platform at the very highest point of the rock. The upper section is enclosed by steep terraced walls, below which is a large tank cut out of the solid rock; it’s thought that water was channelled to the summit using an ingenious hydraulic system powered by windmills. Below here a series of four further terraces, perhaps originally gardens, tumble down to the lower edge of the summit above Sigiriya Wewa.

The path down takes you along a slightly different route – you should end up going right past the Cobra Hood Cave, if you missed it earlier, before exiting the site to the south.

Best bee-haviour

The small wire-mesh cages you can see standing on Sigiriya’s Lion Platform were built as a refuge in the event of bee attacks – several of which have occurred in recent years despite efforts (using a mixture of chemicals and exorcism rituals) to evict the offending insects from their nests, which can be seen clinging to the underside of the rock overhang above, to the left of the stairs. Local Buddhist monks claim that such attacks are divine retribution resulting from the impious behaviour of visiting tourists.

Pidurangala Royal Cave Temple

A couple of kilometres north of Sigiriya, another large rock outcrop is home to the Pidurangala Royal Cave Temple. According to tradition, the monastery here dates from the arrival of Kassapa, when the monks who were then living at Sigiriya were relocated to make room for the king’s palace; Kassapa constructed new dwellings and a temple here to recompense them. It’s a pleasant short bike or tuktuk ride to the foot of Pidurangala rock: head down the road north of Sigiriya and continue for about 750m until you reach a modern white temple, the Pidurangala Sigiri Rajamaha Viharaya (about 100m further on along this road on the left you’ll also find the interesting remains of some old monastic buildings, including the ruins of a sizeable brick dagoba). Steps lead steeply up the hillside behind the Pidurangala Viharaya to a terrace just below the summit of the rock (a stiff 15min climb), where you’ll find the Royal Cave Temple itself, although despite the rather grand name there’s not much to see apart from a long reclining Buddha under a large rock overhang, its upper half restored in brick. The statue is accompanied by figures of Vishnu and Saman and decorated with very faded murals.

From here you may be able to find the rough path up to the summit of the rock (a 5min scramble), but you’ll need to be fit and agile, and take care not to lose your way when coming back down, which is surprisingly easy to do. The reward for your efforts will be the best view of Sigiriya you can get short of chartering a balloon, showing the far more irregular and interestingly shaped northern side of the rock which you don’t get to see when climbing up it, with the ant-like figures of those making the final ascent to the summit (which you’re almost level with) just visible against the huge slab of red rock.

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