Day II
We had our brake first early this morning because we were in a hurry to visit Sithulpawwa, an archeological site located in the Yala / Katagamuwa sanctuary.
It was 7.30am when we reached the entrance of the sanctuary. The road was a gravel one but quit good in condition because it had been repaired recently.
It was nice scenery of small crews of Tamil pilgrims, who were traveling on foot along the eastern costal belt from Jaffna, to participate the Esala festival in the name of God Kataragama. There were number of care centers to facilitate them.
Situlpawwa was a Buddhist temple contained large number of stupas, cave temples, Buddha statues a stupa house and image houses spread among a large land area. This temple complex was attributed to King Kavanthissa who ruled southern area of the country in the pre Christian era.
There were two pagodas, built on Rocky Mountains. One called Sithulpawwa. The other, on the higher mountain was known as Kuda (Little) Situlpawwa. There was a stepped path to the Kuda Sithulpawwa. On both sides of the path were caves and rooms in which the monks could meditate.
It was nearly 10.30 am when we reached Katharagama back. Our next travel location was Sella-Kataragama, where the God Kataragama met his wife in Hindu folk stories. There were several Dewalaya, specially the “Gange Devalaya”( The Temple in the Manik River ) in the name of God Ganesh ( Brother of God Kataragama).
Having a visit to the Devalaya build recently in the name of God Sri Luxmi, we started our journey again. Our route was to Buttala through Yala sanctuary. The sun hit us thorally because the forest had cleared up to 50m from both sides of the road, due to security reasons. We had our lunch at a bank of a tank located in between Buttala & Badalakumbura.
We tried to visit to an ancient fort in between Badalkumbura & Passara, but finally we were fail due to lack of information.
It was 5.00pm when we reached our destination of the day. It was Rasika’s house at Lunugala town. Rasika was a civil administration officer and also a batch-mate of Buddhika, in the university. (You have meet Rasika in my previous travel stories.
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