Ancient capital area of Anuradhapura

January 13th
We got up at 5:30 to get to the Leschenault's Rousette cave in time for the sun to filter in. The previous night we informed the guesthouse owner that we would leave the hotel early in the morning and she said she would leave a key in the lock but she forgot and we had to wait until another female worker got up and came to unlock the door.

At 7:30, a guard allowed us to enter the temple.
The sunshine came into the bat cave better than yesterday but yesterday we had a better view of the bats as some of them were threated and flew to the entrance.




The area around Isurumuniya temple was called the ancient capital area with an ancient water resovoir surrounded by temples, shrines, an ancient palace and museums.

We saw Hanuman Langurs Semnopithesus priam and Toque Macaques.

I think that the Hanuman Langur is an elegant monkey(left).

Toque Macaque is divided into three subspecies and here we might have encountered a different subspecies from the one we saw in Kandy but we couldn't see the difference.

When both species passed by, they seemed to ignore each other(right).

We saw many water birds around the ancient reservoir and we also saw many people taking a bath.

That night we waited for bats in front of the Mahanela Guest House and saw two Leschenault's Rousettes hovering around a Singapore Cherry Tree.

We had to depart very early the next morning. The owner said she would leave a key in the lock but as she forgot to do it that morning, we checked the lock after 9 o'clock in the evening and not surprisingly we found no key in the lock. We went upstairs and urged the owner to put a key in the lock so that we wouldn't miss the train the next morning


Today's dinner

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