I woke at four in the morning, caught a tuk tuk that the hotel had booked for me, and rattled down the road for about seven minutes through a cool, dark breeze. I was hoping to spot wild elephants along the way, since everyone kept saying they were roaming the area that season. I heard them at one point, never saw them that particular morning, though I did see plenty of elephants elsewhere in Sri Lanka during the trip. Just not then.
We pulled up at four forty five, and out of the dark came a warm voice and a friendly face. Good morning, my name is Sunil, I will be your guide. Here is the funny thing about travelling, particularly as a woman. Back home, in my own neighbourhood, I am wary about taking the rubbish out after a certain hour, and yet here I was in a foreign country, in the dark, completely at ease accepting the graciousness of a total stranger. We do the strangest things when we travel.
So I just said okay, and off we went. Truthfully, I was fairly convinced I was not going to climb Lion Rock at all. I had told myself I would take photos from the bottom and call it a day, except it was pitch black and you could not see a thing anyway. Sigiriya, known to most simply as Lion Rock, has around twelve hundred steps by most accounts, though I had read sixteen hundred and Sunil confirmed that figure without blinking. I asked how long it would take. Up and back in about an hour and a half, he said. So we are climbing then. Of course we are, he said, as if there had never been any question. I told him I would need his support going up, since I have vertigo through menopause. No worries at all, he said, and we began.
The path takes you through beautiful water gardens first, and Sunil shone his torch over the old pools as he told me the story of the king who once ruled this land and reportedly kept five hundred concubines who swam naked in these very pools. I pointed out that if he had five hundred concubines and only managed a handful of children between them, he clearly was not using them all that often, and we had a good laugh about it. I still think that particular number has grown a little taller with each retelling over the centuries, the way these stories tend to do, but it is a wonderful legend regardless. All of these steps through the gardens count toward the total, carved beautifully into the rock with no railings to speak of, so I kept my arm linked through Sunil’s the whole way up, being a little unsteady on stairs at the best of times.
We passed through the first opening in the rock face, where Sunil showed me cave paintings thousands of years old, created by monks who once lived in the area. Sigiriya is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and it is easy to see why once you are standing in front of frescoes that old, surrounded by gardens and carvings that have survived centuries of weather and war.
When the sun came up properly later that morning, I wandered back through the same area and it was simply stunning in daylight.
We climbed on to the first real landing, where I stopped to catch my breath and had a photo taken. Looking at that photo now, you can see the fear sitting behind my eyes, not fear of the rock itself but worry that my legs might not hold me. I had been in hospital before flying out to Sri Lanka, and I had been told, quite firmly, not to make this trip. Being me, I went anyway, and standing on that first landing I was genuinely unsure my body was going to cooperate. There was no turning back at that point, not in my mind. I had paid the guide, and we kept going.
The next landing sits just before the final ascent, where excavation work is still ongoing, ropes marking off old pool walls and palace foundations they are slowly uncovering. This is where you see the famous lion’s paws carved into the rock, and the sun was just beginning to break over the horizon as we arrived. I had forgotten to bring water, and a stranger at the top handed me his empty bottle so I could rinse it and fill it from the spring water available there. I did not put it to my lips myself, out of caution, but I did drink a couple of jugs someone offered before we pushed on for the final stretch.
That final ascent is the part that genuinely undid me. An old friend of mine, the very reason I had gone to Sri Lanka in the first place since it was his wedding I was there for, asked me afterward how sketchy that last bit really was. He is thirty six, fit, and had done the climb himself, and even he found it sketchy. The honest answer is very. The railings barely reach waist height, you are climbing at a steep angle up three separate staircases bolted into the cliff face, and I genuinely do not know how so many people manage this every single day without incident. I stumbled more than once, and at one stage Sunil had his hands braced against my back, steadying me, this same stranger I would never have trusted with my rubbish bins back home. We were fortunate to be climbing for sunrise, since the crowds were still manageable, a couple hundred people rather than the busloads that arrive within a few hours after dawn. Had we gone later, there would have been no room to stop and breathe the way I needed to.
The fear that gripped me on those last three staircases was unlike anything I have felt climbing anything before. It was never really a fear of heights for me, once I am at the top and secured I am completely fine. It is the fear of falling, and separately, an intense aversion to see through stairs, anything with open grating underfoot sends me into a spiral. So there I was, managing fear of my legs giving out, fear of falling, fear of the stairs themselves, my stomach and chest and head all pounding at once. I was not alone in this. Other climbers around me were saying the same thing, oh my god, you too, and I told them honestly, I have no words for how terrified I am right now. Somehow, with Sunil beside me, I made it. That final staircase splits into two paths, inner and outer, and I chose the inner one so I could stay pressed against the rock face. There were also monkeys everywhere, which does nothing
for my nerves, the way they dart in and try to snatch belongings.
I reached the top just as the sun properly broke the horizon, and it was beautiful. I had my photo taken, wandered the summit, sat down to catch my breath, and at one point genuinely thought I might lose control of my own body entirely, that is how deep the fear had gone. But I pushed through it.
On the way down, I asked Sunil if anyone had ever died on this climb. Several over the years, he said. I asked what from, assuming falls. No one falls, he told me, it is heart attacks, mostly from climbing at the wrong time of day when the humidity gets people, and a couple of strokes as well. This is not the tallest climb in the world, nowhere near Kilimanjaro or Everest, not that I have done either of those. It is simply a climb you commit to because you are standing there and you have started, and once you start, you finish. Days later I ended up unwell, a stomach upset brought on almost entirely by the fear my body had processed that morning.
Coming home from that trip, I understood something about myself that I had not fully named before. This Capricorn goat has always been good at climbing, at pushing through whatever fear stands in front of her, and I still believe wholeheartedly that everything you actually want in life sits on the other side of fear. What I realised this time, though, was different. I no longer need to push myself to those extremes to prove anything to anyone, and the person I had spent years proving things to was never some critic standing on the sidelines with an opinion about my choices, of which there are plenty in this world. It was me. I do not need to keep proving to myself that I am capable, accomplished, intelligent, savvy, caring, loyal, and genuinely quite remarkable. I already know that.
This climb was cathartic in more ways than I expected. Not many people can say they have stood on top of Lion Rock at sunrise, looking out over the whole of the surrounding national park, the old palace ruins, the throne, the pools, an entire kingdom still being carefully excavated below. I am proud of myself for doing it, and it genuinely shifted how I move through life afterward. I will always chase things that carry a little fear in them, that has not changed. What has changed is the need to push myself to the absolute limit simply to prove something to myself. If I want a challenge for the sake of the challenge, that is one thing, and it is fine. But I do not need it anymore to feel whole.
