Wednesday 16th May 2012 - Anuradaphura, Sri Lanka

I didn't manage to see all the sights yesterday so today I figured I would pay a tuk tuk to take me around and buy that damn ticket. I think it was the worst decision I could have made! I was so uninterested! All the sites were similar - its like once you've seen one site of ruins there isnt really much difference between it and the next. I paid like Rs.5000 in total and was done within two hours. I should have just left today and been satisfied with what I saw yesterday. Ah well.  I got back to my room by like 12pm and spent the whole day in my room contemplating my next move. I decided that I didn't care to see more of ancient cities right now and seeing I was pretty far north already I decided that I would head all the way up to the north of Sri Lanka before making my way any further south. The north of Sri Lanka is divided from the rest of Sri Lanka in the sense that for the past thirty or more years there has been a civil war between the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - aka Tamil Tigers) in the north and the SLA (Sri Lankan Army) in the rest of Sri Lanka. Unlike the rest of Sri Lanka where the people are predominantly Buddhist Singhalese, the north is made up of a majority of Hindu Tamils who originally came over from South India.  The root of the problem apparently dates back to the British colonial times when the the British were thought to have imported almost one million Tamil labourers from South India to work on the plantations after failing to persuade the Singhalese to labour on them. The British were thought to have favoured the Tamil people who were found "to be agreeably capable at learning English and fulfilling the needs of the colonial administration. This apparent 'favouritism'  saw Tamil candidates over-represented in universities and public service jobs". Following Sri Lanka's independence in 1948 the new government (the United National Party) tried to deny the Plantation Tamils citizenship and repatriate them back to India.  It wasn't until 1970 that the actual civil war started though after a string of key events where the government failed to recognise the Tamils as equal to the Singhalese and discriminated against them in many aspects of life - including failing to recognise Tamil as a native language, cutting their numbers in university, and the creation of a constitutional declaration saying that Buddhism had 'foremost place' in Sri Lanka and that it was the state's duty to 'protect and foster' Buddhism.  The inequalities lead to the formation of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - aka Tamil Tigers) who started off with a good cause but are often referred to as terrorists now because of some of their extreme actions. The civil war between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan army has meant that the north of Sri Lanka, aka Eelam, has been off guards to tourists for many years for many reasons, one being the uncleared mine fields.  My guidebook was from 2009 said it should be okay to visit in the next couple of months so I decided I would take a look and see. I spoke to the old man at the guesthouse and he told me that buses ran often to Jaffna so I should just go to the bus station and catch a bus tomorrow. That was it, that was the plan.