A trip to Anuradhpura & Polonnaruwa.

When my mother was ill she said that she wants to go worship Buddhist relics after she get well. So our family and my mother’s sisters’ families made the trip to very historic cities like Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka. These are main cities of two kingdoms ran across more than fifteen centuries. Very valuable in both religious and historic means.  These cities are great tourist attractions.

There are great stupa, large tanks, ancient ruins and wild life as attractions. I am going to share the few places we visited in our trip.

A stupa (from Sanskrit: m., स्तूप, stūpa, Sinhalese: දාගැබ, Pāli: थुप "thūpa", literally meaning "heap") is a mound-like or semi-hemispherical structure containing Buddhist relics, typically the ashes of Lord Buddha , used by Buddhists as a place of meditation. (Wikipeadia)

This stupa called Somawathi stupa and build by a princess called Somawathi containing right tooth relic of Lord Buddha.

This is thousands of years old and repaired and resized over centuries. This image shows the ancient brick walls. This part is left as it is to display how it was before repaired.

This is the ground area of the stupa build using big clay blocks.

This is the great Ruwanwalisaya constructed br king Dutugamunu containing many ashes of Lord Buddha.

I will make many posts about these cities which will contain other parts of ruins.