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Kandy
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26th February - 3rd March 2005.
Welcome to Sri Lanka! We flew from Madras and decided to skip the very busy Colombo city; and caught a train to Kandy. The whole journey took 12 hours, but it was worth the wait. It capped off around 48 hours of travelling from the West Coast of India to the highlands of Sri Lanka. The bed was very good that night!
Kandy was the last Sinhalese kingdom only falling to the British in 1815, after defying the Dutch and Portuguese before them for three centuries.
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The town centre is situated around the beautiful Kandy Lake. On the North side of the lake, the famous Temple of The Tooth. This temple houses Sri Lanka's most important Buddhist relic; the sacred tooth of Buddha.
The tooth is said to have been snatched from the flames of Buddha's funeral pyre, (all those years ago -543 BC), and it was smuggled into Sri Lanka in a princess's hair in the 4th century. It has bounced around the country following the fortunes of different kings and now it sits in Kandy.
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A shrine in the temple of the tooth.
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This little charmer has alot of puff, he plays at three ceremonies each day along with the drummer boys. During this time the tooth, or more correctly its enormous relic casket is available for public viewing.
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Lots of people come here to give their offerings, and we saw many newly born babies being breast fed outside the tooth relic. It is considered very beneficial for the newborn to be within the sight of the Buddha.
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We watched sunset from the enormous Buddha statue on the hill above town.
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We went to see a fantastic Kandyan dancing show, where men in their traditional dress got to leap around on stage and bang lots of drums.
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This mask dance is still used in some areas of Sri Lanka for the exorcism of demons.
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The show ended with fire walking, we had never seen this before, and were suitably impressed. We had a good chuckle at the tourists in the front seats who nearly got their eyebrows burnt when they lit the coals. Every couple of minutes someone turfed an accelerant on the coals, tourists lost eye brows and ran from the heat. Very funny to watch the performers getting a laugh out of the tourists.
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Claire spent alot of time in Kandy, Jason went on an adventure of his own, whilst Claire enjoyed the India hangover of crop dusting for a few days. Claire had a beautiful room with a view, and this was only spoilt by the groundhog-day feel to the place. Everything seemed to be exactly the same on each day;
5 am - morning chanting at the monastery seen in the background from our balcony.
7.15 am - band practice at the school.
10 am - temple of the tooth ceremony and drumming.
Add in numerous porcelain stops, and you have a fair idea of why she thought in was ground hog day.
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Just an observation but all the cafes in town seem to openly advertise that they sell Smak?
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