Saturday morning saw a gentle rise for Rennie and Misa and an early rise for me and Emi, taking Sung, Surang and Teji to Sigiriya for their first climb in time for when the ticket office opened at 07:30am.   This is always a good idea because it permits the climb to be made before the fierce heat of the day (as I wrote previously, it is merely hot and sweaty!), and it is usually also good because it allows the long queues to be beaten.  This time though, we were the only people wanting to climb – and in the two and a half hours it took us to complete the round trip we saw a maximum of 20 other people – and half of those were groundsmen or hawkers selling drinks and tat.  Compare the pairs of photos above and you’ll see the difference that Covid-19 has made; two images from last Saturday and the corresponding images from our previous visit on 28th December last year.

The large rock in the near distance surrounded by trees is Pidurangala – and the subject of the next blog post to come.

Steve