"Kandy is the last Kingdom City of Sriiiiiii Lanka"

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We were up at 6.25am to pack and get ready to leave Vil Uyana. We went straignt after breakfast, at 8am. It is a 2 and a half hour drive to our hotel outside Kandy city - Kandy House. En route we see spice farms, pepper creepers, rose apple trees and many villages and towns. The main town we pass through is Matale which is very busy indeed. I resisted the offer to stop at a spice farm, although I was tempted. The plan was to get to Kandy House and have some time here before our tour of the city later on today. Kandy House is lovely - it is an old Walluwa and has been beautifully restored. We dumped our bags, drank our welcome drink of passion fruit juice and headed straight to the pool to swim and chill out.

We were the only guests there. The pool is stunning - kind of curves into the forest at one end and at the other, an "infinity" edge drops over farm land and paddies. Cows and egrets went about their business below us. Sat listening to the bird song (I heard more birds than I saw) and contemplating coffee and cake on the verandah. After a snack, I fell asleep on the most comfortable sofa outside. Our room is Royal Peacock which has a huge wrap around verandah with several chairs, tables and sofas. After a while, I woke to get ready to meet Seelan for our afternoon expedition.

First stop was a viewing point on a hill side so that we could see over Kandy Lake and city. I'd joked with Roy in advance that Seelan's opening line on his "guiding tour" about Kandy would be: "Ma'am, Kandy is the last Kingdom City of Sriiiiii Lanka". Said in his wonderful accent. And this is exactly what he did say. He then went on to tell us more about the history of the city.

Next we drove down around the lake and out of the city into Perideniya - home of the Botanical Gardens. I'd asked to go there as I'd read a little bit about them. We spent two hours walking around and Seelan showed us lots of interesting things. We also got scammed by the Scorpion brothers! About half an hour into our walk, a guy showed up wearing what looked like "park employee" clothes. He chatted a bit to Seelan and then disappeared. Couple of minutes later, he comes out from behind a bush holding a rake with a scorpion on top of it. He gestured us to come and see it, and take photos. I wasn't fussed but Roy wanted to go - I warned that he'd have to "tip" the guy. We looked at the scorpion, which wasn't doing much but then it's tail started wiggling. We took photos and tipped the guy a small amount. As we walked off I joked with Seelan that he was probably back behind the bush putting his pet scorpion back in it's box. A while later, another guy, dressed identically, appeared with a scorpion on a leaf! By now we were convinced the scorpion was a) the same one and b) dead so we declined to look. When we left the park, I noticed an ATM machine and went in to get some more cash. Roy waited outside and copped for the two men sitting together chatting on a bench! As soon as they saw Roy they both scarpered. Later in our trip, we learned that most tourists we met (who'd been to the Botanical Gardens) had met the Scorpion brothers!

On the way back in to Kandy we had about 30 minutes "spare" and it had started to rain. Seelan took us to a Gem Museum. This was just an attempt to sell us stones, and I wasn't overly happy about it but didn't mind too much - I guess the alternative would have been walking round Kandy in the rain and we did learn some interesting stuff about gem mining in Sri Lanka. The poor guy looked devastated when we declined to look at the trays of jewelry he offered.

From there, we headed to the Kandy Cultural Arts centre to see a display of dancing and music. This was pretty good - it only lasted an hour and we saw drumming, drum spinning, dancing and at the end, some firewalking. Nice way to spend an hour. When we emerged, the sun was setting and the rain had stopped. We ran the gauntlet through an assortment of beggers and hawkers (including one inventive guy who'd popped his arm out of his shoulder and it still makes me feel ill to think about him) in to the Temple of the Tooth. This is, according to Seelan, the most sacred place in Kandy. We had several security checks to go through (full bag search and frisking) as I think there had beem some trouble here some years ago. Now, the significance of the Temple is that it houses the Tooth Relic - a tooth, belonging to the Buddha, which has been in Sri Lanka for many, many years. The story is that the original tooth was destroyed in fire a long time ago, and the one in the casket today is an animal tooth. We'll never know, and we didn't get to see the tooth itself.

Apparently they put it on display about once or twice every 10 years. When we arrived in Sri Lanka, Seelan had told us that the tooth was out on display, and would be for about another 12 days. I was pretty excited about that! Then, on our way to Kandy, I asked him about it again and he said they'd put it away again, because of crowd control - the police had been unhappy about the number of people in Kandy (half a million at the weekend!). I also heard later on that some scaffolding had collapsed near to where people were queuing. Then he told us that they took the tooth out because of drought and that since it had rained, they put it away again. I never was clear on why it was put back! Crowds or rain? Mind you, it was probably a good thing as Kandy - already a busy and bustly city - would have been horrendous with half a million extra people in it!

So, we joined the manageable and quite small crowd heading in to the temple for evening Puja (offerings/worship). At Puja times, they will let you walk past the room where the tooth is held and they open a door so that you can glance in to see the Golden casket. Drummers down in the courtyard were beating everybody in to a frenzy and Seelan even encouraged us to run up the staircase so that we could get in to the queue for the casket viewing. We seemed to stand there for a while, and some people got fed up and left the queue. Then, just after 7pm, the guards let us through. We filed past the door - if you linger too long they shoo you on. I glanced in and saw a huge dome shaped golden casket, brightly lit, and several Buddhist monks walking around the room. When I exited, Seelan pointed me to a place where the floral offerings had been left and from where I could see in to the room and take photographs. Roy missed the casket, as he was too busy trying to find change to leave a monetary offering on the plate the guards were holding out! He was confused as to where he was supposed to be looking, flustered due to trying to find cash, and eventually they made him move on!

It seemed a bit out of kilter to be filing past the casket as tourists, when all around us, there were many genuine devotees who'd come to make offerings to the Buddha. After the casket, we had a quick look around the rest of the Temple highlights - scrolls written on Ola Leaf telling the story of Sri Lanka, and a room showing, in pictures, the history of the Tooth Relic. Not unlike the Catholic Stations of the Cross, in many ways. Then we headed back into the hills and Kandy House - about a 20 minute drive out of the city.
As we passed through the security gate, Seelan surprised us with a very funny remark about how the guard looked like Bin Laden! We were both laughing and joking about it and he started to panic - "Please don't tell him I said that, Sir"!

Dinner at Kandy House was a choice from a small set menu. The food was very good. We had:
Baked crab/bread basket
Jan: Coconut lime chicken, rice, papaya sambol, broccoli, red cabbage & pineapple salad
Roy: Tuna, mashed pumpkin, spinach, tomato salsa
Both: Cashew nut brownie and ice cream. Bottle of pinot grigio.
As I've mentioned, wine here is expensive. We're paying about £25 for a bottle that we can get for less than £5 on the supermarket shelves in the UK. We also find that the least expensive wine on the menu (usually about 3200 rupees, £20) is usually sold out. Which is annoying.

I was highly amused at dinner, listening in to the conversation a Dutch or Belgian guy was having with his waiter. It was like an episode from Fawlty Towers. The waiter, a young Sri Lankan boy, was very helpful but did not speak great English. They had a series of interesting discussions about the papaya sambol, tea and the cd that was playing. I'm too lazy to type it all out! Actually, the cd they played at dinner was interesting, like modern opera - unfortunately the staff could not tell us who it was as it was a copied cd with no label or writing on it!

Early to bed - we have another 6.30am wake up tomorrow.

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Photos

Verandah at Kandy House
Half of our wrap around verandah

Inner Courtyard and bar area
Kandy House Hotel

Scorpion
Dead or Alive?

Tree
Botanical Gardens, Peridenyia, Kandy