Travel to majestic historical sites is, when it comes down to it, an act of creative imagination – and few things serve to remind the traveler of this fact like the task of waiting in line to see said historical sites. This image (one that is usually left out of visual travel accounts) documents me waiting in line to see the rock-fortress city of Sigiriya – a site that is in Sri Lanka, though the line itself reminded me similar queuing experiences in places like Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, Mexico’s Teotihuacán, and France’s Versailles.
This photo actually depicts my time in the second of two lines required to get into Sigiriya: The first line, which snaked me through a ticket pavilion to pay the $30 entrance fee, was even longer; this outdoor security-check line was short and speedy by comparison. I took selfies at both places to remind myself that this, too, is part of the travel experience.
As with, say, Angkor Wat, the entire area around Sigiriya was set up the serve the tourist industry around the ancient city, and for every luxury hotel built to accommodate foreign visitors, there were a few cut-rate “Driver Room” hostels for tour guides and bus operators. The road into Sigiriya was lined with crowds of European sightseers and idling tour buses, which made it difficult (at least initially) to imagine what the place might have been like as a functioning city 1500 years ago.
Though I enjoyed the ruined palaces, pools, and shrines on the summit of Sigiriya, I made a point of coming back down to idle at the base of the plateau, where tour guides labored to find the best sight-lines so that their Chinese and Spanish and Brazilian clients could take pristine-seeming photos of the fortress complex.
One secret I learned from overnighting up the road in Dambulla’s Hangover Hostel was the fact that many budget-minded backpackers save the $30 entrance fee by skipping Sigiriya itself and traveling instead to Pidurangala, a nearby overlook hill, which is said to be the best place to view the ancient fortress-city at sunrise and sunset. This has a way of removing the experience of Sigiriya from its actual physical context, of course, but it does (apparently) make for better Instagram photos.
Note: “Dispatches” are short vignettes, profiles, and mini-essays written and posted from the road, often in tandem with my Instagram account. For more full-formed writing, check out my book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, or the Essays or Stories archives on this site. I don’t host a “comments” section, but I’m happy to hear your thoughts via my Contact page.
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