Dambulla is home to famous caves that house ancient stone carvings of Lord Buddha. The caves were listed as a world heritage site in 1991. As with most cultural sites in Sri Lanka it involves a lot of stairs.

In the 1^st century BC one of the ancient kings took refuge in the caves after his kingdom was overthrown. The monks who were living there looked after him and provided him protection from his enemies. 14 years later he raised an army and retook his throne.  He must have trained his new army by getting them to run up the stairs to the caves. As a sign of gratitude to the monks he built these amazing shrines into the caves.

06 May This entry was published on May 6, 2014 at 5:40 pm. It’s filed under Photography, Travel and tagged Photography, Sri Lanka, Travel. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.