For over a thousand years, Anuradhapura was one of the most powerful Buddhist civilisations in Asia, a hydraulic city that fed millions through a network of reservoirs still in use today. The sacred Sri Maha Bodhi tree, grown from a cutting of the original Bodhi tree and tended without interruption since 288 BCE, is the oldest documented human-planted tree on earth. Three of the ancient world’s largest brick structures rise from the surrounding landscape. Anuradhapura is most meaningfully explored by bicycle at dawn, when it still feels like a living city rather than a ruin field.