Carved, painted rock temples. Golden buddhas, and bodhi trees. Huge monitor lizards and a temple built for …. a tooth! More spicy food than we could eat (actually we couldn’t eat!). Leechy forests and monkey bandits. Kandy you sound sweet but you can pack a punch girl.
Golden Temple Dambulla is the largest and best-preserved cave temple complex in Sri Lanka. Dating back to the to the first century BCE. The rock towers 160 m over the surrounding plains. (more climbing OMG we will have calves of steel after this trip) At the top, and the cave entrance we could see Sigiriya Rock in the distance. All around just miles and miles of jungle and of course, throngs of curious monkeys.
There are more than 80 known caves in the surrounding area. We went to these five caves (now a UNESCO world heritage site) The caves contain beautiful statues and paintings many of which describe Gautama Buddha and his life. There are also Hindu statues of Vishnu and Ganesha – here religions mix so seamlessly.
Prehistoric Sri Lankans would have lived in these cave complexes before the arrival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka as there are burial sites with human skeletons about 2700 years old in this area.
Kandy මහනුවර was the last capital of the ancient kings’ era of Sri Lanka. The city lies in the midst of green hills on the Kandy plateau, which crosses an area of tropical plantations, mainly tea. Kandy is the home of The Temple of the tooth Relic one of the most sacred places of worship in the Buddhist world. It was declared a world heritage site in 1988.
The town is a humid, grimy and noisy one. Looks so pretty from the viewpoint tho. Cars, motorbikes, tuks tuks and crazy busses. You want to cross the street? – use the step out and pray method.
Hard to find food here. We all had had enough of sooooper spicy curry and were craving something other than white wonder bread as the alternative. And A REAL cup of coffee would have been nice. Weak powdered coffee was all that was on offer. Well it is tea country I said in my, “make the best of it” voice. Everyone just grunted. Jeeze, I can hear you shouting, “Boy what a bunch of whiners.” Well talking of wine there was none of that either which for us girls was hard to deal with!! I know… first world problems.
Our guest house Highest View – really was, almost the highest view – such lovely hosts in fact all people here so friendly and kind.
Udawattakele is the forest home of the monkeys who come foraging into town and on our balcony in the mornings – Just look at that hair style!! they came to visit us so now it is our turn to visit them – We had read this was a leechy forest so we took precautions, tucking our socks into our pants and actually taping them with duct tape! We looked well…. lets just say we’ve all looked better. We were welcomed by the folks who live here who were probably wondering why us westerners have such awful dress sense (btw notice they are wearing flip flops do they care about leeches)? The monkeys were also pretty unimpressed by our ensembles and actually gave us the side eye and then ignored us charming.
Lovely forest walk reminded me of my Japanese students teaching me about the beautiful practise of Shinrin-yoku (森林浴) or forest bathing which is a cornerstone in Japanese medicine – They are smart those folks. So beautiful to be in green and it was cool in among the trees – lovely until poor Irene noticed blood on her trousers and then we realised she had been leeched!! that little sucker – pardon the pun -had managed to defy the duct tape and latched on and he had brought a friend there were two – Tony also had one who had bitten through his sock.
Sri Dalada Maligawa or the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic is located in the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy, which houses the relic tooth of Buddha. In Polonawara we saw the former temples that housed the tooth. and now it is here. Since ancient times, the relic has played an important role in local politics because it is believed that whoever holds the relic holds the governance of the country. Kandy was the last capital of the Sri Lankan kings and is a World heritage site.
The boys didn’t seem so thrilled to go to the botanical gardens or see any more sights so we left them to relax. Irene and I hired a tuk tuk to take us there. We spent a lovely couple of hours in the botanical gardens cool, green, manicured and formal. A pleasant place to have a walk, away from the honking horns and polluted streets of Kandy.
Looking forward to our train ride to the central plains. Tea country and cooler climes.