You leave Kandy before sunrise, the van threading through tea-scarred hills until the hills flatten and a lone granite column appears on the horizon: Sigiriya. From the road it looks improbable — a vertical crown rising nearly 200 meters from the central plains — and by the time you park in the village the air smells of earth, spice, and diesel. The walk to the rock is a ribbon of villages and fields; the climb itself switches from shady gardens to metal stairways and the sudden exposure of the final scramble, where wind and view do the work of telling you why people have contested this place for 1,500 years.