Mihintale

After "Anapura" we went to Mihintale. TB1 was ready to call it a day, but I wanted to see the pretty stairs and this ended up being an unexpected jewel of a site. Our driver even knew a short cut so we only had to climb half of the stairs!

At the top there was a center Stuppa with a ring of palm trees. Then off to one side was a large Buddha, behind the Stuppa's there was a big rock, and on the other side there was another, bigger Stuppa.

We climb up to the big Buddha first since there were no pilgrims there, they were all on the rock. He looked young for a Buddha, but he had a beautiful view.

See that big rock on the left, we're going there next.

After we came down, we contemplated climbing the rock. It looked rather precarious and we had already been up so many stairs and steps today, but our driver kind of insisted, and the massive drove of pilgrims had disappeared, so up we went. The climb would not have met code anywhere in Europe or North America! Yet, children and elderly seemed to make it up and down in one piece, and so did we. On our way to the top there was a swarm of school children on our heels that appeared out of nowhere. We took a quick picture and headed back down, making the already difficult assent even more difficult now that it had turned into a two-way path. All of the children pointed and laughed and pointed and laughed at us as we struggled down. It was nice to provide so much entertainment!

TB1 at the top of the rock