The ruins of an ascetic monastery on a forested mountain, reached on a stone path through the trees. The quietest and strangest of the ancient sites, and almost nobody goes.
Ritigala is a mountain that should not be here — a forested massif rising abruptly out of flat dry-zone scrub, high enough to make its own weather. The upper slopes catch cloud and hold a cool, wet forest entirely unlike anything around it, which is why the whole mountain is a strict nature reserve and the summit is closed to visitors.
What you can visit is the monastery at its foot, built in the ninth century for pamsukulika monks — an ascetic order who wore robes made from discarded cloth and rejected ornament altogether. The ruins reflect that. There are no stupas, no image houses, no carving to speak of. What remains is austere and rather beautiful: a huge stone-lined bathing pond at the entrance, then a broad paved path running up through the forest, linking a series of double platforms joined by little stone bridges.
Nobody is entirely certain what the double platforms were for. One was probably for meditation and the other for a companion, or for the monk's few possessions. The uncertainty suits the place.
The walk up and back takes about an hour and a half at an unhurried pace, all of it shaded, with monkeys and a great deal of birdsong for company. On a weekday you may well have the entire site to yourself, which cannot be said of anywhere else on this list.
