Polonnaruwa is hot: very very hot. I wrote a bit about the history of this ancient city in my planning blog over 2 years ago so won’t repeat that here. If interested in some of the history then here it is.

We arrived here from Dambana following our day’s experience with the Veddah community. We must have crossed an invisible line somewhere as the temperature is very noticeably hotter. 

The main point of interest here is the ancient city ruins and if you read the planning blog for this section you may remember the Duran Duran video of ‘Save a Prayer’ which embeds, as a backdrop, some of the ruins as well as other Sri Lankan locations.

As much as we enjoyed sauntering around the site in the blazing heat, we really loved watching the monkeys jumping between and around the ancient structures and observing their behaviour. We liked it so much we used our ticket to return at dusk and rented a bike to cycle around and took some sundown shots.

The Monkeys of Polonnaruwa

Did you know that the longest running research of primates has been conducted in and around Polonnaruwa? You may have watched David Attenborough’s Life of Mammals series recorded 15 years ago? Episode 9 entitled ‘Social Climbers’ was shot in Polonnaruwa. If interested then below is the full episode. It’s worth it just to listen to David Attenborough talking about the different monkeys and why they do what they do.

Or head over to the Disney film/documentary Monkey Kingdom (2015) on Amazon which highlights the complicated social structures of a monkey colony and how that impacts on their quality of life. It’s about a mother monkey called Mya who must save her family and filmed in Polonnaruwa too. Here’s the trailer:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bZr44dprAJ4

Below are our monkeys:

And here’s a few of our dusk shots when we returned

If you missed yesterday’s or previous blogs then scroll below for them.

Next up: Walking through villages and around ancient water irrigation tanks on our way to Habarana.

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