The rock next door to Sigiriya, and the only place you can stand and look at Sigiriya itself. A rougher, cheaper, emptier climb — and the best sunrise in the region.
Pidurangala is the outcrop immediately north of Sigiriya, and there has been a monastery at its foot since long before Kasyapa built his palace on the neighbouring rock. Partway up you pass a reclining Buddha in brick and plaster, lying in the shelter of an overhang.
Above that the path stops being a path. The last section is a scramble over boulders, using your hands, through a gap that is tighter than it looks. It is short — a few minutes — but it is genuine scrambling and not for everyone.
What you get at the top is the view that Sigiriya cannot give you: Sigiriya itself, in profile, with the plain and the tanks stretching out behind it. At sunrise the rock catches the light before anything else does and the forest below holds mist for the first half hour.
It is a fraction of the price of Sigiriya and, for a good number of visitors, the more memorable of the two. Doing both is entirely reasonable — Pidurangala at dawn, breakfast back here, Sigiriya in the late afternoon.
