CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 597 km round trip from Dambulla - roughly 13 h 43 in the saddle. It goes by way of Ancient City of Polonnaruwa, Central Highlands of Sri Lanka, Sacred City of Kandy and back through Central Highlands of Sri Lanka. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,050 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 70 km this is Sri Lanka Hill Country Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
The rock at Dambulla rises some hundred and fifty metres above the plain in the dry heart of Sri Lanka, a great bald dome of granite, and in its upper flank five caves hold one of the most extraordinary Buddhist shrines in Asia. Tradition says King Valagamba sheltered here in the first century BC when he was driven out of Anuradhapura, and that after regaining his throne he turned the caves into a temple in gratitude. Monks had been using them long before that, and kings went on adding to them for centuries.
Read the complete Rangiri Dambulla Cave Temple write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Rangiri Dambulla Cave Temple is where the day begins. Next is Ancient City of Polonnaruwa.
Polonnaruwa was the capital of Sri Lanka from the late tenth to the early thirteenth century, after the older capital at Anuradhapura was sacked, and its ruins are spread across a wide area of parkland beside a vast artificial lake. That lake, the Parakrama Samudra, was built by King Parakramabahu I in the twelfth century, and it is a testament to the ambition of the man who famously declared that not a single drop of rain should flow to the sea without serving people first. It still irrigates the paddy fields around the town today.
Read the complete Ancient City of Polonnaruwa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ancient City of Polonnaruwa comes up about 73 km into the recorded legs. Next is Central Highlands of Sri Lanka.
North of Kandy the hills rise into a jagged massif that British surveyors thought looked like the knuckles of a clenched fist, and the name stuck: the Knuckles Range. It is one of the three parts of the Central Highlands World Heritage site, together with the Peak Wilderness and Horton Plains, and it is the wildest and least visited. The mountains are covered with montane forest, cloud forest at the highest points, grasslands and steep valleys with rivers and waterfalls. The weather changes fast; mist can sweep in over a ridge in minutes, and the air is noticeably cooler than in the plains. Many plants, frogs and lizards here exist nowhere else on Earth.
Read the complete Central Highlands of Sri Lanka write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 228 km into the recorded legs you reach Central Highlands of Sri Lanka. Next is Sacred City of Kandy.
Kandy sits in a bowl of hills in the middle of Sri Lanka, about five hundred metres above the sea, with a small artificial lake in the middle and the roofs of the Temple of the Tooth at its edge. The city was the last capital of the Sinhalese kings, who held out in the hills against the Portuguese, Dutch and then British for more than two centuries, until the British took it in 1815. The relic that gave the place its sanctity, a tooth said to be that of the Buddha, was brought to the island in the fourth century and passed from capital to capital, and has been kept in Kandy for centuries. The Sri Dalada Maligawa, its home, is white, gold-roofed and surrounded by a moat, and the evening drum ritual, with conch shells and chanting, is a moving thing to watch.
Read the complete Sacred City of Kandy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacred City of Kandy, about halfway. Next is back through Central Highlands of Sri Lanka.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Central Highlands of Sri Lanka write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Central Highlands of Sri Lanka sits at 217 km, about halfway. Next is back through Ancient City of Polonnaruwa.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ancient City of Polonnaruwa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ancient City of Polonnaruwa comes up about 525 km into the recorded legs. Next is Rangiri Dambulla Cave Temple.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Rangiri Dambulla Cave Temple write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Rangiri Dambulla Cave Temple closes the day.
Rangiri Dambulla Cave Temple → Ancient City of Polonnaruwa is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ancient City of Polonnaruwa → Central Highlands of Sri Lanka is 155 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Central Highlands of Sri Lanka → Sacred City of Kandy is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacred City of Kandy → back through Central Highlands of Sri Lanka is 72 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Central Highlands of Sri Lanka → back through Ancient City of Polonnaruwa is 155 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Ancient City of Polonnaruwa → Rangiri Dambulla Cave Temple is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.