In late May, another pilgrimage season came to an end at one of Sri Lanka's highest points. Tens of thousands of pilgrims, the very old and the very young, make the journey each year. Most of them climb at night up an illuminated staircase. Refreshments stalls and resting places make the climb easier, though the sacred atmosphere is marred (for some) by the sound of radios carried by young people, and litter is liberally scattered. During the months outside the pilgrimage season the mountain is bleak and rains make the trail treacherous.
Being only 2243 metres high, Sri Pada is not very tall as mountains go. Yet as you approach it from certain angles it appears much higher. Such is its imposing location and angular shape that devotees of a proto-religion invested it with sacred power, perhaps because of the foot-like indentation at the summit. Several millennia ago, these early islanders made it the residence of Saman, one of the four guardian deities of the island, and called it Samanelakhanda ('Saman's mountain').
Sri Pada is the most important religious geographic entity in Sri Lanka. Apart from being its most dramatic mountain, which in the past provided mariners with the important first sighting of the island from the west, it is considered sacred by adherents of the island's four major religions. The summit becomes the focal point of an annual pilgrimage (some of the pilgrims from India and beyond) during a season that begins in December, peaks in March and continues until the Buddhist Vesak festival in May. As the Venerable S Dhammika, an Australian monk, asserts, 'Mount Sinai was considered sacred at a much earlier date, Mount Fuji surpasses it in beauty and height, and Mount Kailash evokes a far greater sense of mystery. Nevertheless, no other mountain has been revered by so many people, from such a variety of religions, for so many centuries, as Sri Pada has.'
It appears the mountain became a place of pilgrimage for people of many faiths during the 11th century. Buddhists began to refer to the mountain as Sri Pada ('Sacred footprint'), maintaining that Siddhartha Gautama visited it and left his footprint on the pinnacle boulder. Hindus called the peak Shivan Adi Patham ('Creative dance of Shiva'), as they felt that the footprint symbolised Lord Shiva's dance. Muslims believed that after Adam was expelled from Paradise he landed on the summit; the depression is thought to be where Adam stood, on one foot, in expiation for an age. Sometime later, Roman Catholics asserted that the footprint was that of Saint Thomas, the early Christian apostle who supposedly preached in South India.