Definitely one of my silly travel stories till date! It was the last day of my trip in Sri Lanka way back in 2015. It was also my first time travelling solo outside my home country (India at the time) and wasn't expecting anything exciting apart from my planned itinerary. I had saved Sigiriya rock climbing as one of the last things on my to do list as wanted to get the most our of it. A night before this day, I had stayed near Polonnaruwa village. I was travelling with a driver cum guide since I was new to the whole idea of travelling solo in an alien country. Up to this point, I had already spent 3 nights in Sri Lanka while covering Colombo, Galle city and Polonnaruwa village on the go. I must say that it was a lengthy trip for sure and end up spending majority of time travelling between cities and attractions. Learnt a lot though from that experience!
I checked out of my hotel in the morning post breakfast and started travelling to Sigiriya. I had read a lot about it and was delighted to visit at last. It was a sunny day and I reached just in time before it usually gets too crowded in the afternoon.
I started ascending the rock right away. There was a pathway full of travellers like me leading up to the basement of the rock. I could see Asians, French, Italians, Japanese, Koreans, and many other nationalities walking along the way. While walking I was trying take some pictures of mine with a DSLR and without a tripod! I was obviously struggling there. After few failed attempts a guy walked in and asked to offer a help. That was Paul! You can see him in below picture. So we started helping each other taking pics and talking along the way. He was also travelling solo. I was fascinated by his story.
He told me that he was on a 6 month full-time exploration trip across South East Asia. I was taken aback by hearing that. Prior to that moment, I had never imagined that someone can go on such a crazy adventure, that too solo! I was in awe of his audacity, by the way he wasn't planning to do any work on the go (like teaching kids in small towns which lots of people do while taking a travelling break from life) and was spending most of his savings from 4-5 years of hard work. That time I was thinking how can someone simply spend most of their savings on such a trip (couple of years later I realised myself that I would rather go on such a trip and explore unknown that keeping money sitting in bank account!)
After reaching the basement, we realised that it was just the beginning and the climbing was just getting started. A long staircase was waiting for us!
Fortunately, I haven't had too much food and was carrying a bottle of water. That time I understood why my driver preferred staying in the car having a short nap in AC than climbing Sigiriya with me. He had already made it clear though that he is not interested.
We had no other choice but to proceed, so we did. Sooner I understood that staircase was never ending!
After approaching the end 1st leg of the climb, we could see that the next leg going to be even more interesting. See it yourself below;
Before reaching the summit of the Sigiriya rock, we were gifted with a short stop next to a tiny cave which had few ancient paintings drawn on them made of women; most of these paintings were not in a good condition. Hence, flash photography was strictly prohibited there. This was the place where we met the group of Japanese girls along with their Sri Lankan guide.
After giving random poses and taking few group pics we get to the next leg of climbing, the third leg! I realised that it was a famous hiking spot for most of the Europeans; however some of us being Asians were not that used to climb so many stairs just for fun!
Till now five of us were climbing together for a while and took a group pic after reaching to the 1st view point as seen below. Here, Sri Lankan guide told the Japanese ladies that her stamina is over and can't really go further up! Yes, you heard that right. There was a final leg left to be climbed as visible behind us in the pic below. It was an interesting sight; the whole structure was built as if there were legs of a giant turtle on either sides of the stairs going to summit.
Issue that guide had was neither of those Japanese girls could speak english and she was communicating with them only in Japanese. That explains why these girls were climbing a rock with a guide. Now, Paul was from Korea and I was from India. Neither of us could speak Japanese too. Sri Lankan lady asked us a favour to take the girls to the summit since there was no one around more reliable than two of us (its funny that a Sri Lankan lady trusted two guys both from different parts of the world!) and bring back after witnessing the stunning sites from the top. She somehow convinced the girls to go with us.
Four of us except the guide started climbing the last leg of the tiresome activity; reaching Sigiriya top. We also started making some small conversations with girls and they seemed to understood a part of it but couldn't express their thoughts properly in english. I must say, I was totally amazed by the fact that four strangers from three different countries couldn't have a proper dialogue but still enjoyed each other's company and somehow got along well.
After climbing for another 10 min, we reached the top of the mountain and got to see stunning landscape as can be seen in below picture;
We saw a monk who was taking pictures of travellers and posing for some too! He seemed to be enjoying his stardom since being the only monk around that time of the day.
The bonus snap below! By the way, we realised that the monk was way younger than us!
We spend some more time on top and I managed to capture all sides of the area;
And then finally before descending down the rock, we gathered together one last time for a click!
In the end, I actually gave Paul a lift till nearby bus station since he had literally walked to the place from nearby village. I had lots of fun hanging out with these guys that day.
Hope you enjoyed this post and gave you some good laughs. Feel free to share you own experiences in comments in case you also visited this rock else let me know if it was useful for you to consider it in your itinerary for Sri Lanka. Happy travelling!
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