Anuradhapura was the capital of Sri Lanka for well over a thousand years, and it still feels like a capital of a certain kind, one made of brick, water and devotion. Standing in the dry zone, in the flat north-central plains, it grew from a settlement of the fourth century BC into the heart of a Buddhist kingdom that built huge dome-shaped dagobas, monasteries and reservoirs. The great tanks, or artificial lakes, were the engineering marvel that made rice farming possible in an area with scarce rainfall, and you can see several of them from the road, wide mirrors of water ringed with palms.
At the centre is the Sri Maha Bodhi, a fig tree said to have grown from a cutting of the tree in Bodh Gaya under which the Buddha reached enlightenment. According to the chronicles, the cutting was brought here in the third century BC by Sanghamitta, a Buddhist nun and the daughter of the emperor Ashoka, and the tree has been tended without interruption since. Pilgrims in white come to leave flowers and light lamps, and the atmosphere is calm. The giant dagobas, Ruwanwelisaya, Jetavanaramaya and Abhayagiri, rise like white hills, and the Jetavana was once among the tallest structures in the ancient world.
Dress and manners matter. You will be asked to cover your shoulders and knees, remove shoes and hats on sacred ground, and walk clockwise around the stupas, and it is the hot paving stones of midday that teach you to bring thin socks. Come early or late, when the light is gold and the heat is bearable.
For riding, the country around is flat and straight, with long, rather hypnotic roads running through paddy fields, scrub jungle and village after village. Traffic is the main hazard, with buses that overtake without hesitation, tuk-tuks, cattle and dogs, and monsoon rains can make surfaces slick. Anuradhapura is a good-sized city with fuel and plenty of rice-and-curry places. Mihintale, a hill to the east where Buddhism is said to have arrived on the island, makes a good short ride. The central highlands rise to the south, and the road to Kandy swaps the heat for tea terraces and cool mist.