Mondays update.

Saturday, I wake up to the sounds of the jungle outside my window. I head off for the Anuradhapura site. Stop off at the internet cafe, actually its more like a cemetery for old pcs, but it works. The local tourist map is useless, I end up at the wrong part of the tour site, its so green with grass, mossy bricks and trees, its not real out of the world, and so peaceful. Buddhist monks clamber onto a bus, dressed in dark red robes. I am all alone in the vast parkland, in the distance is the huge Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba, it comprises of enough bricks to build a 2M wall from London to Edinburgh.

There are small plants with soft pink flowers, whose leaves fold together when touched. A fat mongoose hides in a burrow near by a tree root. I walk to the next temple, there is a long procession of Buddhist faithful walking in a procession, a elderly man has a tray of purple flowers, the national flower of Sri Lanka, he smiles at me and I ask if I can walk beside him. His name is Deteniyake, at a guess. He is a former chief inspector, and now farms rice as a seed to distribute to the local falmers.I take my shoes off and walk around the large white stupa, It takes me 10 minutes, the air is scented with many fragrances from the burning incense. Swifts fly around the dome, the marble floor is covered with scarab beetles, why I do not know why they are dying in the noon day sun.. People who are meditating stop and pick them up and put them in a safe place.

When I walk past a reclining Buddha I notice his eyes close when you walk past him, from the feet upwards.

I decide to leave the tranquility and head for Trincomalee, its the worst road I have been on, its more like a road that leads to a beach, not the A12 I know. A 2ft lizard scoots across the road, lts going to be one of those afternoons