Kandy, Dambulla and Sigiriya

---

We left Dalhousie after a big breakfast and headed to Kandy.

Our guest house has a wonderful view of Kandy lake and the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic and was a great place to relax after a busy day with a pot of tea. We headed to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in time for the evening puja. The temple houses Sri Lanka's most important Buddhist relic - a tooth of Buddha. The tooth was said to be snatched from the flames of the Buddha's funeral pyre in 483 and smuggled into Sri Lanka during the 4th century. The heavily guarded room was opened at 6.30pm for the followers and tourists. The tooth itself is kept in a golden casket shaped like a dagoba which contains a series of six dagoba caskets of diminishing sizes. You get to view the dagoba from 3m away but you do not get to see the actual tooth. Rumour has is that the real tooth is not even at the Temple, just a replica with the actual tooth at another secret location. The Kandyian drummers played during the puja and many devotees offered gifts and flowers. We also visited the Sri Dalada Museum which displayed a collection of gifts given to the temple and a series of photos of the temple and the damage from the LTTE bomb that exploded here in 1998.
We then met Wolfgang for dinner at Sharon Inn, another delicious array of Sri Lankan curries from the home kitchen and a real treat for dessert - ice cream!

We had a spare day so decided to do a day trip to the ancient sites of Dambulla and Sigiriya. We caught the local bus to Dambulla. This is the area for the famous royal rock temple. The caves sit 150m above the road and have been a place of worship from the 1st century BC. There are five separate caves with huge Buddha figures inside and paintings on the walls and ceilings which are though to be 19th century. The caves were amazing and really well preserved.

Catching another bus we arrived at Sigiriya. This is a huge mountain/rock on the flat plain. It looks awesome. There is some controversy as to whether this was a Buddhist monastery or a palace. It has a lovely entrance through what was originally water gardens to the the base of the rock. It is then a steep climb up the steps, passed Cobra Hood Cave and the frescoes. No-one knows if the buxom women depicted in the paintings represent Tara, the most important figure in Tantric Buddhism or King Kassapa's concubines. The paintings were in amazing condition thanks to protection afforded to them by the cliff face. We then walked passed the mirror wall which clings to the side of the hill. The smooth wall contains graffiti from 6th and 14th centuries showing the development of the Sinalese language. We were told that we were not allowed to go to the top because of hornet attacks. At first we thought this was some kind of scam and we did not come all this way to not see the top. We went passed a couple of signs that said to keep the noise down because it attracts the hornets but we thought that we would give it a go anyway. We walked further to Lion's Paw and climbed the stairs to the top. Despite thinking the hornet problem was a slight exaggeration, we thought best to be safe than sorry, we snuck up to the top so quietly. We saw a lot of dead hornets on the way, so had a quick walk around, took a few photos and headed back down. We were the only people there and we had a fabulous view overlooking the green fertile plains.

When we got back to our guest house, the owner told us that Sigiriya had been closed because of hornet attacks, there were 25 tourists in hospital and 4 were in a critical condition. We are not sure whether the attacks occurred that morning before we arrived or later in the afternoon. Sounds like we were very lucky! Had we known that hornets can kill you we might not have gone any further!!! Our friends later told us that they were walking up Sigiriya at the time that a lady came down the mountain with at least 200 hornet stings, apparently hornets will continue to follow you after the sting, right to the hospital if they can. Definately would not have gone to the top had we known, especially with the way I react to insect bites!

This morning we explored the market in Kandy, just as it was being set up - fresh fruit and vegetables, all types of fish and the butcher's cutting their meat with an axe! It really was an impressive sight.

Today is our last day - we fly out to London for a couple of days at the hideous time of 3.45am. We have really enjoyed Nepal, India and particularly Sri Lanka. Despite the haggling and constant attention that we have attracted, most people have been very friendly and we have had an amazing opportunity to explore these countries and gain some understanding about their culture and hardships. Hard to believe our trip to the sub-continent is over but we are looking forward to Morocco and the Middle East and then Africa where we think the hard part will truely begin.

---

Comments

[anonymous]

loving the use of photos! And everyone needs a nearly killed by flying insects incident. Good work