We left the next morning for Polonurewa, a place we couldn't say properly and I'm fairly sure I just misspelt.

We arrived in the heat of the day, splitting up to take care of changing money, organising onwards transport and e-mailing family, before we met up to look at the ruined former capital in the late afternoon. The city of Polonurewa was Sri Lanka's capital for around 200 years following the turn of the first millennium, and after it's sacking by an army from Northern India, lay forgotten and overgrown for nearly 600 years until discovered and reclaimed from the jungle by the British in the mid 19th century. The site is quite large (a couple of kilometres from one end to the other) and we took the easy way out, cruising round in our car, protected from the heat and sun. When we arrived we had to fight our way through the hordes of sellers (and naughty monkeys) who were practically fighting each other for our attention (and ultimately, our money). They were very persistent and were quite close to ruining the experience until Jorg and I began to get a little more "pro-active" in getting rid of them. But once we were left alone to wander the ruins, we started to feel the magic. It's pretty easy to believe the hype that today's "civilisation" is the peak of all human achievements, but coming to a place like this shows you that as a species, we've peaked many times before. As Europe entered the dark ages, these people were constructing huge monuments and temples that were many lifetimes work for highly skilled architects, stonemasons, plumbers and artists.

We walked around the vast site taking in Temples, Places and Pagoda's, reaching the finale right on sunset. We could hear the drums from a distance and as we got closer we could see a ceremony was taking place in front of some type of carved alter. Carved from a single rock, the four separate Buddha images are considered to be the zenith of Sri Lankan Buddhist art, who am I to argue? There was a feeling of timelessness watching the sun go down to chanting and drumming out in the jungle and we returned home talking of things ancient, and desperately hoping that the drunken wedding party (which we'd encountered when checking into the guesthouse) had gone home.