An Englishman in Sri Lanka

Travelling by train is a joy in Sri Lanka. The trains leave on time, give you more leg room than the buses and offer some fantastic views out of the window. They have a wonderful antiquated feel about them with special carriages and places "reserved for the clergy" and men sitting by the tracks with red and green flags signalling that the points have been changed.

I was making my way north to the city of Anuradhapura, which is famous for the ruins of an ancient city and is perhaps Sri Lanka's most holy place. The train wound its way slowly through lush green paddy fields, banana and coconut plantations and stopped at some sleepy stations seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

Anuradhapura was where Buddhism first found its home in Sri Lanka and it still draws pilgrims from Sri Lanka and the rest of the Buddhist world. They come in their thousands to pray under a Bo tree which is said to have been grown from an original cutting from the tree where Buddha first gained enlightenment.

In the shaded precinct there is a constant murmur of prayers being recited. It is a fascinating place to sit for a few hours to soak up the atmosphere, as families of pilgrims come to spend the day and can be seen eating their lunch or reading the newspaper. It is a very different feeling from a church back home.

It is also famous for the extensive ruins that once made this one of the great cities of the world. They were only `rediscovered' in the 19th century and even today new areas and buildings are still being reclaimed from the jungle.

Many of the ruins have been returned to their former glory such as the giant Dagobas that can be seen for miles around. They are vast spherical monuments that house key Buddhist relics and are painted white which make them glare in the midday sun. One British explorer calculated that these massive structures, which are some 80m in diameter and 50m high, contained enough bricks to build a 3m high wall from London to Edinburgh.

Perhaps more interesting was coming across ruins, which were still hidden away among the trees or were surrounded by paddy fields. These ruins can be seen all around the town - next to the main road, by the school or in people's gardens.

One area was described as a monastery and you could make out the outline of the buildings and occasionally you came across a complete doorway or a sculpture. Particularly impressive were the vast sunken baths, which were perhaps 10m deep and 30m long.

There were very few other tourists in among these ruins. I was kept company by a few cows, a family of monkeys and the odd snake that would crawl from the brickwork. There was definite feeling of coming across a lost city and I wasn't surprised to find out that a great deal of 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' had been filmed here in Sri Lanka.