Kandy Wanderings
Double edition.... Sigiriya to Kandy and Day 1 in Kandy
Thursday's breakfast was a leisurely one. We'd organised with Lakmal to drive us down to Kandy and set our departure time for about 10am in order to arrive for a 2pm check-in at our Kandy hotel. As we waited in the 'lobby/restaurant' we were just chatting and a woman approached me asking if my name was Helen Moore. Yeeesssss … she put out her hand to shake hands and introduced herself "Hi, I'm Helen Moore … I saw your name in the guest register, saw you were from Australia and when I heard your accent I figured it might be you" Its a very strange feeling meeting someone with your name.
Its only 90km from Sigiriya to Kandy but on a narrow road, with a zillion tuk tuks and half a zillion maniac bus drivers it generally takes about 2-3 hrs. We'd decided to give the caves at Dambulla a miss - our legs were still in recovery mode from the climb of Lion Rock the day before. To describe the bus drivers as maniacs is an understatement - blind corners and oncoming traffic mean nothing to them. A line of traffic in front of them means nothing either and we spent a considerable part of the trip with a bus merely inches from our back bumper. Ever-cool Lakmal just kept driving. I tried to get a couple of pictures - managed to get my camera on the wrong setting, but you get the picture!
Kandy is the complete anthesis of Sigiriya - its big, bustling and incredibly noisy.
After checking in we had a bit of a wander to orientate ourselves with the city, found a supermarket to get milk and just relaxed for the rest of the day.
We're catching the train from Kandy to Ella on Saturday so our first job today was to get to the station and pick up our tickets.
Mission accomplished we braved some street crossing and made our way out of the station precinct, past the 1950's Clock Tower and into a local market where toy sellers rubbed shoulders with sari sellers, spice shops and mobile knife sharpeners.
We stopped for a coffee then headed out for a lap of the lake. Renovation/maintenance work was evident all the way - gabion walls are being replaced, new paving and turf are going in, and silt trap remediation work is being carried out. Of course we complied with the signs!
The Queens Bath-house is going to be lovely when restoration is complete.
I've already talked about the crazy drivers here in Sri Lanka, but their capacity to astonish me knows no bounds. This driver thought he'd collect his little princess from a pre-school by driving up and then reversing back into the traffic to get out. It ended without incident but some serious horn work took place while he did so.
We also came across this fellow. I believe they are called land monitor here - this bloke looked like he'd just eaten one of the ducks that inhabit the area and was sitting groaning while it digested. I'd estimate he was probably 5feet plus from head to tail.
By this time we'd circumnavigated the lake and headed for a late lunch. We planned to visit the Temple of the Tooth for the 6.30pm prayers so we headed back to our hotel for a bit of time off our feet.
Legend has it that the tooth of the Buddha was retrieved from his funeral pyre in 483BC and smuggled into Sri Lanka in the 4th Century AD. The symbol of sovereignty, it came to be believed that whoever had custody of the tooth was the rightful ruler. After time spent in Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, the tooth came to Kandy in the late 1600's. The Portuguese pinched it and tried to destroy it but it was magically rescued and now sits inside a multi-layer golden stupa shaped casket in the "Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic" The temple was built in stages between 1687 and 1782 and the tooth has been kept here safely since, even surviving a bombing in 1998 at the height of the Sinhalese/Tamil civil war.
Appropriately dressed (shoulders and knees covered for both of us ... which meant jeans) we walked down to the Temple of the Tooth about 5.45pm. Handing over another 1500Rp each, and our shoes we found ourselves in the temple itself. The entrance is gloriously painted and around the corner is the shrine base. Signs everywhere advise you NOT to pose for photos with your back to the shrine. Later, on our way out we saw a woman doing just that, and just as I commented on her stupidity to Tony, a temple official approached her and asked for her phone. He deleted the offending photo - much to her chagrin.
A bit of a wander round the bottom level and we headed upstairs only to find a crowd growing already. We joined it and sat & chatted to a fellow from Timaru in NZ who was currently living in Edinburgh. The crowd grew and a soon the drumming & chanting began. This went on for probably 30 minutes and all of a sudden our line was moving. Quite by accident we'd actually joined the right line and were among the first to move into the shrine itself.
More bizarre than visiting Ho Chi Minh's tomb in Hanoi, our line was hustled along, with each person (pilgrims and foreigners) giving exactly one second to drop their offering on the counter or grab a look at the sumptuous casket that contains the tooth before being moved on.
After our split second glimpse (no photos - so here's one, like the Sigiriya frescos, I've lifted from the internet so you can see what we'd have missed if we'd blinked) we headed into the rest of the temple site. A prayer hall has a series of 20 paintings depicting the history of the tooth and an altar at one end where tonight devotees were chanting.
An outdoor prayer hall, gongs, washing fountains and offerings make up the site. By this time it was dark and I think made it all the more beautiful. We retrieved our shoes and headed off in search of dinner.
Tomorrow we plan on exploring the huge botanical gardens.
Thursday's breakfast was a leisurely one. We'd organised with Lakmal to drive us down to Kandy and set our departure time for about 10am in order to arrive for a 2pm check-in at our Kandy hotel. As we waited in the 'lobby/restaurant' we were just chatting and a woman approached me asking if my name was Helen Moore. Yeeesssss … she put out her hand to shake hands and introduced herself "Hi, I'm Helen Moore … I saw your name in the guest register, saw you were from Australia and when I heard your accent I figured it might be you" Its a very strange feeling meeting someone with your name.
Its only 90km from Sigiriya to Kandy but on a narrow road, with a zillion tuk tuks and half a zillion maniac bus drivers it generally takes about 2-3 hrs. We'd decided to give the caves at Dambulla a miss - our legs were still in recovery mode from the climb of Lion Rock the day before. To describe the bus drivers as maniacs is an understatement - blind corners and oncoming traffic mean nothing to them. A line of traffic in front of them means nothing either and we spent a considerable part of the trip with a bus merely inches from our back bumper. Ever-cool Lakmal just kept driving. I tried to get a couple of pictures - managed to get my camera on the wrong setting, but you get the picture!
Kandy is the complete anthesis of Sigiriya - its big, bustling and incredibly noisy.
After checking in we had a bit of a wander to orientate ourselves with the city, found a supermarket to get milk and just relaxed for the rest of the day.
We're catching the train from Kandy to Ella on Saturday so our first job today was to get to the station and pick up our tickets.
Mission accomplished we braved some street crossing and made our way out of the station precinct, past the 1950's Clock Tower and into a local market where toy sellers rubbed shoulders with sari sellers, spice shops and mobile knife sharpeners.
We stopped for a coffee then headed out for a lap of the lake. Renovation/maintenance work was evident all the way - gabion walls are being replaced, new paving and turf are going in, and silt trap remediation work is being carried out. Of course we complied with the signs!
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| This clapped-out old clunker wasn't going anywhere |
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| The resident fish are conditioned to being fed at certain places round the lake |
I've already talked about the crazy drivers here in Sri Lanka, but their capacity to astonish me knows no bounds. This driver thought he'd collect his little princess from a pre-school by driving up and then reversing back into the traffic to get out. It ended without incident but some serious horn work took place while he did so.
We also came across this fellow. I believe they are called land monitor here - this bloke looked like he'd just eaten one of the ducks that inhabit the area and was sitting groaning while it digested. I'd estimate he was probably 5feet plus from head to tail.
By this time we'd circumnavigated the lake and headed for a late lunch. We planned to visit the Temple of the Tooth for the 6.30pm prayers so we headed back to our hotel for a bit of time off our feet.
Legend has it that the tooth of the Buddha was retrieved from his funeral pyre in 483BC and smuggled into Sri Lanka in the 4th Century AD. The symbol of sovereignty, it came to be believed that whoever had custody of the tooth was the rightful ruler. After time spent in Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, the tooth came to Kandy in the late 1600's. The Portuguese pinched it and tried to destroy it but it was magically rescued and now sits inside a multi-layer golden stupa shaped casket in the "Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic" The temple was built in stages between 1687 and 1782 and the tooth has been kept here safely since, even surviving a bombing in 1998 at the height of the Sinhalese/Tamil civil war.
Appropriately dressed (shoulders and knees covered for both of us ... which meant jeans) we walked down to the Temple of the Tooth about 5.45pm. Handing over another 1500Rp each, and our shoes we found ourselves in the temple itself. The entrance is gloriously painted and around the corner is the shrine base. Signs everywhere advise you NOT to pose for photos with your back to the shrine. Later, on our way out we saw a woman doing just that, and just as I commented on her stupidity to Tony, a temple official approached her and asked for her phone. He deleted the offending photo - much to her chagrin.
A bit of a wander round the bottom level and we headed upstairs only to find a crowd growing already. We joined it and sat & chatted to a fellow from Timaru in NZ who was currently living in Edinburgh. The crowd grew and a soon the drumming & chanting began. This went on for probably 30 minutes and all of a sudden our line was moving. Quite by accident we'd actually joined the right line and were among the first to move into the shrine itself.
More bizarre than visiting Ho Chi Minh's tomb in Hanoi, our line was hustled along, with each person (pilgrims and foreigners) giving exactly one second to drop their offering on the counter or grab a look at the sumptuous casket that contains the tooth before being moved on.
After our split second glimpse (no photos - so here's one, like the Sigiriya frescos, I've lifted from the internet so you can see what we'd have missed if we'd blinked) we headed into the rest of the temple site. A prayer hall has a series of 20 paintings depicting the history of the tooth and an altar at one end where tonight devotees were chanting.
An outdoor prayer hall, gongs, washing fountains and offerings make up the site. By this time it was dark and I think made it all the more beautiful. We retrieved our shoes and headed off in search of dinner.
Tomorrow we plan on exploring the huge botanical gardens.
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