How many New Years do you people need?

Four months into 2012, I'd already had to endure three new years in the countries I visited. The Solar New Year (1 January) and Lunar New Year (23 January) in Korea were easy enough to avoid, and the swarming streets didn't look much different from the safety of my tower. But the Sinhalese New Year in Sri Lanka (13 April) was a different matter, as the family-owned shops, restaurants and hotels that are so pleasingly prevalent in developing countries all took the day off so they could go swimming in the lake. Where's an evil corporation when you need one? I'm thirsty.

It was like being back in the UK during that dead period between 25 December and 3 January when the Western world shuts down (I never did work out what was going on there). It's my own fault for not doing my research, as I'm pretty sure there are websites and leaflets out there designed specifically to inform me about this. If I'd known the country would be sleeping for 48 hours I wouldn't have spent my Thursday uploading photos of old ruins on a tediously slow connection - I could have done some emergency stockpiling instead. But if there's one thing you will have noticed about me in recent months, it's that I'm incapable of planning ahead.

Bodhi langurage

The pleasantly mouldering temples of Anuradhapura aren't just curiosities for tourists to visit and write ace blogs about. Even the more remote ones attract their fair share of interactive scenery (i.e. local people), and major ones like the Bodhi Tree Temple are extremely hard to take vacant photos of without some bloody humans getting into frame. Sometimes I can't tell if I'm a perfectionist or a misanthrope.

The Bodhi tree itself is reputed to date back to 288 BC, which is really, really old. Impressive, sure, but did this tree uproot itself and fly hundreds of miles to join its owner in exile, like the Tobiume plum tree at Dazaifu definitely actually did? Didn't think so - bad luck Bodhi, you get second place.

Citadel

'Citadel' is another word I love, like 'dilapidated' (and there's plenty of that here too). It's one of those terms that feels loaded with historical intrigue, like 'labyrinth,' 'catacombs' and 'Maharajah.' Or maybe these words just take me back to early-90s dungeon quest Amiga games. Either way it felt very satisfying to be wading through overgrown fields and discovering parts of Anuradhapura's forgotten city.

At least it feels forgotten compared to the likes of Angkor in Cambodia. I didn't have to make use of odd angles and strategic cropping to avoid the tourists this time - no one was here except me and my monkeys.

The fresh prince of bell stupas

(Yeah, I know - but it was either that or an even worse Star Wars pun based on these bell-shaped shrines being called 'dagobas' in Sinhalese).

The difficult-to-pun Anuradhapura was my third major stop in Sri Lanka, and the point at which this country finally became good. Wandering around in the overgrown ruins of the citadel was my favourite experience in this country, but the dagobas were pretty nice too - mainly for being absurdly gigantic on occasion. These were among the biggest structures in the ancient world, and not all of them have been annoyingly renovated and made to look nice.

Walking around on these vast stone plateaus took me back to the Egyptian pyramids, and I had a similar feeling of awe about the achievements of early human civilisation, long before the founding of Rome or Athens.

Or aliens did it, whichever.