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HE SAID... Today we were travelling south from Dambulla to
Kandy.
After navigating the tourist rabble and evading the intense morning sun at Dambulla’s Cave Temples, we jumped into our minibus around 10:30am and set off on our journey to Kandy. We’d only left the bustling city of Kandy four days earlier, and we were looking forward to returning.
On the way we stopped in
Matale, a small regional city in Sri Lanka’s renowned spice growing region. It was a welcome break after being on the road for an hour. The sole purpose of our stop was to visit Luckgrove, a beautifully calm and lush roadside oasis that specialised in spices, herbs and indigenous Ayurvedic medicine. We made our way through Luckgrove’s shaded spice gardens to a thatched hut, where we watched a cooking demonstration in the open air over a smoky open fire. Our hosts made pumpkin curry,
pol sambol (shredded coconut with onions, chilli and lime) and
pol roti, (coconut roti), and Ren helped with the
pol roti under the close supervision of ‘old mate’, our wise and sagacious Ayurvedic guide. Ren also sampled the
pol sambol with
pol roti straight from the hotplate, but I was
harbouring a slightly dodgy stomach from the previous day, so I didn’t try any of the freshly cooked fare.
Following the cooking demonstration which finished around midday, we walked a short distance to a large open dining area for our buffet lunch. I took it easy, helping myself to a small plate of rice, fried eggplant,
dahl (lentil curry),
kangkung (water spinach),
ladies fingers (okra),
pol sambol and pumpkin curry. We finished the meal with curd and treacle and a scruffy handful of
thala guli (small sesame and palm sugar rolls wrapped in paper). The
thala guli rolls were delicious, and we snacked on them for the rest of the day.
After lunch we wandered the tranquil spice gardens with our astute old guide, listening judiciously as he explained the variety of herbs, spices and medicinal plants growing in the region (including cocoa, vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, nutmeg, pepper, cardamom, aloe vera, sandalwood, ginger and turmeric) and how they are used in Sri Lankan cooking and Ayurvedic medicine. It was an interesting tour, as much for the shelter of the shaded gardens as it was for hearing how herbs heal everything.
However, the tour took an even
more interesting path when we arrived at a small hut and old mate started massaging Ren with his herbal-based therapeutic oils. And he wasn’t alone – male masseurs appeared from nowhere and started massaging anything in sight. It was an ambush! Well, maybe not so much an ambush as a well-coordinated promotional drive for Luckgrove’s massage products, and if truth be told, I really enjoyed my face massage. Ren had a head, neck, shoulder, arm and leg (calf) massage, and she felt very relaxed afterwards. It was an interesting experience in the calm oasis of a Sri Lankan spice garden.
Emerging from Luckgrove’s gift shop unscathed, we left Matale in the early afternoon and continued our journey south to Kandy. On the way we drove through middle-elevation tea plantations, and we also passed Wattegama, a small town northeast of Kandy where Ren’s parents lived and where Ren’s oldest sister Roshi was born. We continued our southerly ascent in the minibus, twisting and turning through narrow busy roads as we climbed to Kandy’s 500 metre elevation. We crossed the Mahaweli Ganga, Sri Lanka’s longest river and a key source of the country’s hydroelectricity, and I remembered our meal five days’
earlier with Ren’s aunt and uncle at the Mahaweli Reach Hotel, which sits on the bank of the great river.
We arrived in Kandy in the mid-afternoon and made our way straight to Senani Hotel, set high up in the hills with a stunning view overlooking Kandy (and Kandy Lake). We headed to the hotel pool, but the sun had disappeared and the water was a little cool, so we opted for the hotel bar instead. It had an incredible vista of the hills surrounding this bustling city in Sri Lanka’s heart, so we settled in for a few Lion Stouts with travel companions Phil, Deb and Damien.
Oblivious to time and the world around us, we sat and enjoyed the view as the late afternoon slowly faded into early evening. With a sudden recollection that we were on a food trip, we clambered into our minibus and headed down into the township of Kandy for dinner. We found a fantastic place for
hoppers (thin crispy rice flour and coconut crepes cooked in a mini-wok) called Midland Deli, so we made our way upstairs to the restaurant’s dining area, settled at a table and ordered a mouth-watering meal
of
egg hoppers,
plain hoppers, chicken curry,
dahl, chicken
kottu roti (roti chopped up and stir-fried with eggs, meat and vegetables) and
pol sambol.
As we were about to leave the restaurant I came face-to-face with my doppelganger, or so everyone at our table seemed to think. A group had just arrived and settled at a table beside us, and one of the guys looked a little like me (and we had matching red t-shirts). I would hardly have described him as my ‘look-alike double’, but then again, my senses weren’t as sharp as normal. The Lion Stout we’d been enjoying was fairly strong with an 8.8% alcohol content, so it may have clouded my judgement. We shook hands and laughed nervously – what do you say to someone you’ve only just met who looks very similar to you?
Anyway, having bid farewell to my doppelganger, we headed back to the hotel and settled on a small balcony at the hotel bar overlooking Kandy’s picturesque hills for a few nightcaps with our fun-loving and high-spirited travel companions. It had been, and continued to be, a fantastic evening, especially as it was Ren and my eleventh anniversary.
We
woke at 6am and relaxed in our room for a while before heading to breakfast in the hotel’s open air dining area. The view from our table offered the same panorama of Kandy as the balcony we had shared the night before… this hotel was getting better and better! I had guava juice, tea, boiled eggs, fresh bread and marmalade, and while I’d opted against the Sri Lankan breakfast, I was feeling much better than the previous morning. Two Buddhist monks were staying at the hotel, accompanied by a string of women who did everything for them, and I struggled a little (a lot actually) with their vanity. After strutting around the buffet (with women in tow) and pompously pointing at what they wanted, the women quickly and neatly arranged the ‘selected’ food on a plate, took it back to their table and placed it in front of them. I know where I would have put it! I thought they could have gathered their own food, but that’s probably my cultural background imposing itself on another…
After an enjoyable breakfast (sans the monk fiasco), we clambered into our minibus and drove down into the heart of Kandy for a
tour of the Sri Dalada Maligawa, the city’s famous Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. The morning heat was intense, and I was feeling it under my sarong which I was wearing to cover my knees out of respect for Buddhist custom. The crowds were thick even at the early hour, and we crammed into the temple shoulder to shoulder with throngs of locals and tourists alike.
We didn’t have much time to view the gold casket that apparently contains Buddha’s tooth, as we were caught within the unrelenting momentum of the crowd. A group of four musicians (three drums and a horn of sorts) were playing traditional Sri Lankan music as we gradually edged our way towards the tooth, and it was piercing – really piercing. I was relieved to be caught up in a crowd that was dragging me further and further away from the Drum Beating Corridor in which they were playing. Young children dressed in immaculate white costumes were accompanying their parents on a pilgrimage to view the sacred tooth relic, and I soon realised the immense import this incredible temple has in the lives of Sri Lankan Buddhists.
We also visited the Sri
Dalada Museum in the newer Alut Maligawa wing behind the temple, where a wall is covered with photographs that show the aftermath of the 1998 bombing of the temple’s main entrance by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). At least 17 people died in the suicide attack, and more than 25 were injured. It’s impossible to sympathise with terrorists, regardless of the cause. I remember reading Emile Zola’s
Germinal in Year 12 and being captivated by the revolutionary ideas of Souvarine. The novel is set in a bleak coalmining town in Northern France in the 1860s, and Souvarine is a Russian anarchist who works side-by-side with the exploited miners and their families. I was shocked to discover that he was a heartless terrorist, and to this day I remember the troubling scene in which he left the coalfield, having just triggered a series of detonations that left the mine in ruins to spite its bourgeois owners. Yet in doing so, he condemned his fellow proletariat coalminers to death:
“At that moment Souvarine rose to his feet on the shaken slag-heap. He had recognised Maheude and Zacharie sobbing together in the presence of this total collapse which must be
pressing with its stupendous weight on the heads of those poor wretches dying down below. He threw away his last cigarette and walked off into the darkness without so much as a glance behind. His shadowy form dwindled and merged into the night. He was bound for the unknown, over yonder, calmly going to deal violent destruction wherever dynamite could be found to blow up cities and men. Doubtless, on that day when the last expiring bourgeois hear the very stones of the streets exploding under their feet, he will be there.” (Emile Zola, Germinal, 1885)
We made our way out of the museum, walked parallel to (but not through) the impressive open-air Audience Hall and eventually found ourselves standing outside the Rajah Tusker Hall with a mass of school children. Why were we here? It’s a question I’ll be asking myself for a long time. I completely understand the appeal of Rajah to Sri Lankan children who’ve heard stories of this gigantic elephant (who died in 1988) from their parents and grandparents, but I didn’t feel like being crushed in a tiny room with screaming kids to stare – momentarily – at a poor old stuffed elephant, and
nor did I feel like staring at photos of the stuffing process on every wall of the tiny hall. I wasn’t wholly convinced that Rajah was the work of an authentic taxidermist, but then again, I wasn’t in there long enough. I need to forget poor old Rajah – I wish he’d just been buried and allowed to live on in our memories through a collection of historic and biologically sensitive images.
Traumatised by the physical legacy of poor old Rajah and the sheer mayhem of overly-excited school kids, I managed to escape the Tusker Hall in one piece and navigate my way clear of the crowds. The mid-morning sun was searing, so we sought shade wherever we could. We collected our thongs (flip flops) from the shoe counter and made our way out of the temple complex, passing St Paul’s Church on the way. Ren’s mum used to teach at this church school, and it was fascinating to be in a part of the city that had such close ties to Ren’s family. Just over the road from the church was a small cafe (Barista Coffee Kandy), so we ordered iced lime tea and settled at a table.
The cafe’s air-con was an absolute life saver!
Feeling suitably refreshed from our morning tour of the Sri Dalada Maligawa, we walked through the bustling streets of Kandy to the Central Market, sampling veralu olives marinated in chilli (yuck) and rambutan fruit on the way. After wandering the crowded market stalls, we back-tracked to the Queen’s Hotel and settled in for the afternoon with our fellow travellers. I stayed on the beers, while Ren had a few Elephant Rides (a cocktail comprising old arrack, lime juice and passionfruit juice). We snacked on French fries and relaxed in comfy chairs in the hotel’s old colonial world atmosphere. It was a fantastic way to wind down from a few intense days of travel.
In the mid-afternoon we squeezed into a three-wheeler (motorised tricycle with a passenger cabin, also called tri-shaws or tuk-tuks) and headed back to the hotel. Unfortunately for me, the three-wheeler couldn’t make it up the hill with three people in the back, so I had to jump out and walk the steepest part of the road! Ren, Alix and an embarrassed driver were waiting for me at a less inclined section of road further up the hill.
We headed straight to the pool when we arrived at the hotel, staying in the cool water until 4pm.
We were joining a local Sinhalese family (in their house) for a home-cooked meal that evening, so we clambered out of the pool, threw on some clothes, climbed into the minibus and drove headfirst into Kandy’s busy outer suburbs. At one stage on the way I saw, in my peripheral vision, a young Buddhist monk throw a rock at a street dog – this was not in keeping with Buddhist philosophy, and I couldn’t help but wonder why monks were behaving so badly in my world today?
We arrived at the house in the late afternoon, and we were handed a betel leaf as we entered the front door. We watched the husband and wife cook in tandem in the kitchen, and at times we joined in. We helped prepare and cook
kavums (doughy deep-fried rice flour oil cakes) and
kokis (crispy deep-fried rice flour snacks), then settled around the family dining table with a cup of tea to sample the snacks. I wasn’t a fan of either, but I did enjoy the sesame balls that were already on
the table.
We’d picked up some drinks from a Cargills supermarket on our way out of the city, so we relaxed on an open balcony in the balmy night air while the husband and wife team finished preparing our meal and their youngest daughter set the dining table. We sat down to a delicious meal of
string hoppers (steamed vermicelli-like rice noodles),
pittu (coarse rice flour and coconut couscous and steamed in a cylinder), chicken curry,
aloo kiri hodi (potato in coconut milk gravy),
seeni sambol (caramelised onion relish),
lunu miris (onion, chilli and lime relish),
red pol sambol and
yellow pol sambol with Maldive fish. It was a privilege to share such a mouth-watering feast with such a welcoming family.
As the meal drew to a close we bid farewell to our friendly host family and headed back to the hotel. We settled on a small balcony at the hotel bar overlooking Kandy’s beautiful hills for a few nightcaps with our travel companions. Damien was in particularly high spirits, as his cherished Irish rugby team was about to play England in a Six Nations Championship match in Dublin. The hotel did not have the telecast channel he
needed, so with only minutes before the match, he was anxiously trying to free up enough bandwidth from the hotel’s Wi-Fi to stream the game through his laptop. The stress was beginning to show, but after much fiddling, connecting, disconnecting and repositioning, the game flickered to life on his laptop screen, freezing at inopportune times due to the flagging bandwidth. Ireland eventually won, giving us all cause for celebration, and none more so than Damien himself.
We had a long south-easterly train trip to Bandarawela the following day, but it was a mid-morning start, so luckily we didn’t have to worry about an early night.
SHE SAID... On our drive from Dambulla to
Kandy, we stopped at the Luckgrove Spice Farm near
Matale. This area is full of spice farms and many of them offer free tours of the farm (with the obligatory hard sell in the gift shop at the end). We were stopping for longer than just a farm tour, and we had lunch and a cooking demonstration included too. There was a bit of a miscommunication with our group leader Thila and the farm, and the woman who was meant to be doing
the cooking demonstration wasn’t ready when we got there. She was very huffy about it and kept telling Thila off in Sinhala during the entire demonstration (it was quite amusing, especially as I was the only one in the group who could understand what was going on). We sat in a darkened hut and watched as she cooked a pumpkin curry in a clay pot on an open fire (for our lunch later on), and then involved us in making a
pol sambol (shredded coconut with onions, chilli and lime) and
pol rotis (coconut rotis) which we ate as a snack. The rotis were still piping hot off the griddle.
Lunch was a sprawling buffet of rice and many curries, but to be honest I lost track of them, especially as there were no real standout dishes. Dessert was curd and treacle, as well as
thala guli – small sesame and
jaggery (Sri Lankan palm sugar) rolls, which I hadn't had since I was a kid. They were delicious and a big hit with everyone. However, when we went back to the buffet for more, they had all disappeared. A big bus load of filthy tourists had walked through
and emptied the lot into their bags and pockets before they’d even sat down at their table for lunch! How selfish and rude is that? Thila had to ask the waiters to bring more
thala guli rolls out for our group. So much sesame and
jaggery happiness!
After lunch an older man called Shanthan (who had been hanging around the cooking demonstration, trying to tell our cooking demonstrator how to cook) gave us a tour of the spice gardens. I had expected a lush plantation-type working garden, but this was more a ‘show garden’. However, it was a cool and shady space and I enjoyed the walk. We were shown ‘sample’ trees of fishtail palm, cacao with pink pods, sandalwood, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and pawpaw; and tiny plots of ginger and aloe vera plants, and vines of pepper and vanilla beans.
Even though we knew most of the information Shanthan shared about the plants, I hadn't heard of their
Ayurvedic (one of the world's oldest holistic healing systems) uses before. We sat in a little hut while he further explained the properties and uses of many spices and oils. We tasted delicious spiced tea, and some of us
received a massage with various oils. Andrew got a face massage that he wasn’t expecting, but ended up quite liking it (for a self-confessed non-massage person, that’s high praise!). The head, neck, shoulder, arm and half leg massage I got was seriously fabulous, and of all the oils Shanthan ‘demonstrated’ on me, the red sandalwood oil was my favourite. I had fully intended to buy some at the gift shop, but then realised the prices were eye-wateringly expensive… so I politely declined to reward their preposterous business model.
We left the spice farm in Matale and continued to make our way to Kandy. We passed middle elevation tea plantations and terraced rice fields as we steadily climbed higher into the hills on the Central Highlands. I fell asleep for parts of the trip, but when randomly looking out the window at one point, I was surprised to see that we were driving through the small town of Wattegama – a place my Mum and Dad lived when they were first married, way before I was even a twinkle in their eyes. Anil our driver had taken this route to avoid traffic on the more direct road. However, we were
still quite delayed by railway track repairs.
We eventually crossed the Mahaweli River near the Pollgolla Dam, and drove into Kandy for the second time on this trip. When we were in Kandy the first time, it was about seeing family and exploring my childhood memories – this time we planned on playing the part of ‘proper’ tourists.
At 3:30pm we arrived at Hotel Senani, high in the hills behind Kandy Lake. Our room was very cute and comfortable, but the first thing I noticed was the big ‘Beware of Monkeys’ sign on the balcony door! The view from our balcony gave a sense of how hilly Kandy is, but we also realised that it was significantly cooler up in the forested hills than at the crowded street level. We weren't gathering for dinner until 6:30pm, and seeing as it was too far and steep to walk to town, we decided to sit in the pool for a bit. Unfortunately the sun had disappeared over the hills and the water was too cold (never thought that would be a problem in a tropical country!), so we retreated to the hotel bar attached to the beautiful open air restaurant.
With Debbie, Phil and Damien, we sat at the bar and toasted St Patrick's Day and our 11th Anniversary. 😊
Three large Lion stouts later (which we hadn’t realised were much stronger than the normal Lion beers), we were a little bit giggly and happy. We rushed to our room to change for dinner, and made it just on time to our minibus which was driving downhill to Kandy town. It was a Friday night and we got stuck in a mother of all traffic jams – it took a full 10 minutes sitting at an intersection before there was a break in the traffic so we could turn right into the lakeside road!
We parked at the Kandy City Centre (a shopping centre/mall) and used their toilets before walking via the Queen’s Hotel walkway to Midlands Restaurant. We watched the theatre of
hoppers (thin crispy rice flour and coconut crepes cooked in a mini-wok) and
kottu roti (roti chopped up and stir-fried with eggs and vegetables) being made at the front of the restaurant, before being seated upstairs. Damien, Andrew and I shared
egg hoppers,
plain hoppers and
vegetable kottu roti with chicken curry,
dahl (lentil curry)
and
pol sambol. The
hoppers were phenomenal, and we were already looking forward to the next opportunity to have them! The
kottu roti, on the other hand, wasn’t as delicious as we thought it would be.
By this point we’d probably had more drinks when we should have. However, on our return to Hotel Senani, the pre-dinner drinks crew gravitated back to the bar and were also joined by Jacquie, Lisa and Steve. Andrew and I didn’t last long, but a few others continued on until the hotel staff shut the bar and turned the lights off. 😊
We woke up at 6am, slightly later than our 5:30am at the start of the trip. We were either gradually getting used to the time difference or we were a bit tired from our night of drinks. We walked into the open air restaurant for breakfast, and I was surprised at the quantity and variety of items offered at the breakfast buffet. However, on closer inspection, the quality wasn’t that great. I first opted for toast with eggs and bacon, but also felt compelled to try the Sri Lankan option of red
pittu (coarse red rice flour and coconut couscous
and steamed in a cylinder) which I had with a watery
dahl and
pol sambol. It confirmed that I’m just not a fan of the dry and coarse consistency of
pittu as a savoury dish (even though I drowned it in the sauce from the
dahl). The only way I can enjoy it is the way we had it as children – soaked in milk until it is porridge-like, with sliced bananas or sprinkled with sugar.
After breakfast we climbed into the minibus for the short drive downhill to the Sri Dalada Maligawa (Temple of the Sacred Tooth), the most revered Buddhist site in the country. The temple houses an important Buddhist relic – a tooth of the Buddha. The legend is that the tooth was stolen at his funeral and smuggled into Sri Lanka, hidden in the hair of Princess Hemamali who fled from India.
The temple complex includes the Royal Palace of the Kingdom of Kandy (the last Sinhalese Kingdom in the country to fall to the British). The complex is right next to Kandy Lake and is totally surrounded by high metal fencing – even blocking off a road that used to run past it
and around that part of the lake. As far as I can tell, the higher security measures have been added after the entrance to the temple was bombed during the civil war. Our minibus dropped us off a short distance away from the main gate on a small side street, which was full of rows of stalls selling small arrangements of floral offerings. It created a colourful and fragrant walkway to the high security gate.
The temple complex, although large, looked quite modest from the outside. The expanse of carved white walled buildings blinded us in the bright morning light, and the red, shiny brown and gold roof tiles also glistened in the sun as we walked up the long path through the front park of the temple. It was a very inviting entrance and we stopped to admire the statues, noting that the sculptor of the statue of Don Stephen Senanayake (the first prime minister of Sri Lanka) had been much kinder to him that the sculptor of his statue in the Independence Memorial Hall in Colombo.
We had timed our visit for the 9:30am
puja (prayer ceremony) which is one of three prayer times a day
when the heavily guarded chamber of the tooth relic is opened. It seemed like a great time to visit at
puja, but not surprisingly, the number of people absolutely soared at that time. Plus it was a Saturday, which meant the temple was even busier than normal.
We checked our shoes in at a counter near the ticket booth and crossed the moat around the temple complex. We walked through the main entrance into the ornately painted
ambarawa tunnel-like entry which led into the Drummer’s Courtyard in the lower floor of the main shrine, where musicians in traditional costumes had announced that
puja had commenced. There was a horn blower and three drummers beating a very loud but not very tuneful tune. And the fact that the drums were ‘unique’ Kandyan drums didn’t help to make the music sound any more pleasing to my ears.
In contrast to the plain white exterior, the interior of the temple’s open rooms of dark wood and stone were richly decorated with intricately carved wooden pillars, inlaid ceilings, murals and extensive gilding. The Drummer’s Courtyard was in front of a roped off chamber with heavily decorated doors and many elephants tusks. This
used to be the chamber that housed the tooth relic before it moved upstairs to its current location. It was obvious that the temple has grown organically over time, and rather than presenting a cohesive design, the layout had a sense of being very added-on.
It was so super crowded by now that we could only shuffle forward a few inches at a time as we headed in a haphazard five-person-wide queue towards the stairs leading to the upper floor of the main shrine. We kept this painfully slow crawl up a wooden staircase for about 10 minutes before we were finally able to make our way into the main chamber, which was heaving with a sea of devotees dressed in white. And all the while the music blared on.
We were directed into two lines that snaked past the chamber of the tooth. We took the outside line so that people making offerings of flowers and food to the priests could be closer to the chamber as we shuffled past it. The relic of the tooth is kept in a golden casket within six other golden caskets of increasing size, so all we could see was the
interior of the small but heavily gilded shrine and a fleeting glimpse of a stupa shaped casket which was flanked by two large elephant tusks. It was a very hot, crowded and noisy affair. While I was glad we had the opportunity to see the shrine, I did feel bad that we were merely there for a bit of a gawk and were impinging on people who were praying fervently. For some of the worshippers, this was a once in a lifetime pilgrimage.
We shuffled back downstairs to a landing and lined up to climb back up into the central room of the
pattirippuwa (octagon) building. It had originally been part of the Royal Palace and used for public addresses, but it now housed a collection of ancient palm-leaf manuscripts in glass cabinets and a collection of Buddha statues. We attempted to line up to visit the third room on the second floor which contained a small shrine with a very old Buddha statue, but the room was closed just as we got to the top of the stairs. Had we known that this shrine was only open during the brief period of
puja, we would have visited it
before the manuscript room. Oh well.
At that point we left the old temple, walked along a stone courtyard and climbed a few stone steps into the Alut Maligawa (the new temple). On the ground floor of this three storey building is a large shrine hall full of Buddha statues. In direct contrast to the old part of the temple, this part was calm, relatively quieter and the stone floor was cool underfoot. We lingered here much longer as a result. The focus of the room is a golden Buddha at one end, and the rest of the long rectangular hall was lined with dozens of smaller Buddha statues in different poses. The walls were also lined with art works that depicted Buddha’s story from enlightenment to reaching nirvana. When talking about this hall later, Andrew couldn’t remember what it was called and referred to it as the room with the ‘Stations of the Cross’. As religiously inappropriate as that was, it was also weirdly accurate. 😊
The two floors above this hall contained the Sri Dalada Museum, which exhibited a very wide variety of ‘stuff’. It ranged from old and surplus ceremonial items, to all manner of
big and small donations to the temple throughout its history, to letters and diary entries of British rulers. It felt more like a hoarder’s lounge room than a museum. It was overwhelming, and not in a good way. For me, the photographic history was the most interesting collection, it contained grainy photos from decades ago to the recent-ish photos of the aftermath of the senseless bomb blast that damaged the outer building of the temple.
The museum desperately needed a curator to assess its collections and advise them that they don’t need to exhibit EVERYTHING they have, all at once. On the plus side, the architecture of the building was beautiful, with exquisite stone carvings and metal details that deserved much more attention than the majority of the contents of the museum!
We walked past the beautiful 18th century
magul maduwa (Audience Hall), an open air pavilion with carved wooden columns and a Kandyan style roof. It was where court was held, and also where the British famously signed the Kandyan Convention in 1815, ending the Kingdom of Kandy. Quite fittingly, this open pavilion design was heavily drawn upon for the blueprint of the Independence Memorial Hall in
Colombo.
We bypassed the King’s Palace which now holds the Museum of the Department Archaeology, and stood observing a glass house of sorts where devotees were lighting little clay oil lamps. It was very atmospheric, but the thick smoke from the oil lamps made it impossible to stay in the glass enclosure longer than a few minutes. I can see why they removed this aspect of Buddhist worship from the main enclosed building.
I had heard the term ‘Kandyan period of architecture’ before, but had little understanding of it until we visited this temple and palace complex. I can now recognise the distinct style of flat tiled roofs, open constructions of carved wooden pillars, intricate decorative inlays and sinuous art. I quite liked it.
I also now realise how closely interwoven the Buddhist and Hindu religions are with the Sinhalese and Tamil cultures in Sri Lanka. I’m not sure if cultural norms where integrated into the religious practices or vice versa, but it’s very obvious and seemingly impossible to disengage one from the other. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
Lastly we lined up at a smaller palace (where the king used to meet foreign
guests) with a very excited school group to have a quick look at the sorry looking taxidermy-fied remains of the temple elephant Rajah. This beautiful gigantic tusker, a much loved and treasured temple elephant for over 50 years, died in 1988. I figured out that it was Rajah who would have been the centre piece of all the
Esala Peraheras (an annual elephant procession through the city to celebrate the tooth relic) that I loved to watch when I was a kid. 😞
The act of keeping elephants in servitude is totally abhorrent to me, and I was slightly repulsed at my much younger self for loving this public display of animal cruelty on such a grand level. So it wasn’t a surprise that I was a bit (a lot) taken aback by the fact that Rajah, who was ‘so loved and treasured’, would be treated so disrespectfully by being stuffed and put out on display. To make things even worse, he had been shoved into a room that was much too small, and the taxidermy job wasn’t great – the pigmentation on the skin looked like it had been painted on! Poor Rajah, a slave in life and
a crude spectacle in death. 😞
By now we were all hot and tired and suffering from visual and auditory overload. So we stopped at a coffee shop chain called Barista for a cold drink cool down – the iced lime tea totally hit the spot. The cafe was directly opposite St Pauls Anglican Church, which is not only a beautiful red brick church, but also meaningful to me because my Mum used to teach there. I remember visiting the school and playing with the primary school boys while Mum was at meetings.
We then walked past the Queen’s Hotel to the Kandy produce market. We walked around the outside stalls of the market and then entered the white market building that I remembered from decades ago. We tasted a chilli marinated
veralu fruit, which the vendors were calling Sri Lankan olives. I love olives, but this one wasn’t to my liking. We also tried a
rambutan, a hairy red fruit in the same family as lychees and longans, but it was a bit overripe and not as tasty as I remembered them being. Our last tasting was a mangosteen, which is one of my all-time favourite tropical
fruits, but again it wasn’t quite as delicious as other ones I’ve tasted. It was disappointing that none of our tastings had been great. We walked along two sides of the internal market, which contained stalls with produce, dry rations and spices. However, we gave up when we hit the butchery section and it became all too pungent. As much as I liked walking through a very local produce market, it wasn’t the most visually engaging market I’ve walked through. I think it suffered in comparison to the crisp and fresh produce we’d seen at the Dambulla Wholesale Market a few days earlier.
By now the Saturday market crowds and back-to-back crowds on the street were getting to us, so we decided a sit-down with a drink was in order. At this point we were disappointed to hear from Thila that a tea-tasting we had thought we could go to after the market trip wasn’t going to happen, as all 12 people in the group weren’t interested in the optional activity. We were especially disappointed that Thila had used this Kandy tea-tasting as a balm to calm our annoyance at the fact that there wouldn’t be a tea tasting
when we did the factory tour in Bandarawela in the next few days. Oh well, you win some, you lose some… so a few of us hatched the plan to drown our disappointment in some adult drinks.
We pushed our way through the crowds, walked back uphill and settled down at the very civilised bar in the beautiful colonial Queen’s Hotel – a much loved icon on the main street of Kandy. I imagine that the Queen’s Hotel was once the centre of British society, and even though it’s now very much in the faded grandeur/needs refurbishment category, it still had a sense of drama about it.
Most of our group opted to have cold beers, but Lisa and I decided to try the Elephant Ride cocktails with old arrack, lime and passion fruit juice – they were divine! Three of those later, we were quite happy with life. We were all so comfortable sitting ad chatting at the bar that we decided to skip lunch and have hot chips right where we were. 😊
At about 2pm we tore ourselves away from the Queen’s Hotel and the nine of caught three three-wheelers (motorised tricycle with a
passenger cabin, also called tri-shaws or tuk-tuks) up the hill to the hotel. We found ourselves in a slightly hair raising impromptu three-wheeler race along the way, but Alix, Andrew and I lost miserably as our driver broke a gear cable up a steep hill and Andrew had to get off and walk to the top! Quite a lot of fun, but a bit silly really.
Back at the hotel we squeezed in some quick pool time before gathering at 4:30pm to drive to Katugastota (a suburb of Kandy) for a Sinhalese food cooking class and demonstration. The very large house of our hosts was down a long laneway and bordered rice fields. We were welcomed into the house with a betel leaf, which was presented to each of us by Kolitha and his family.
We began the cooking class by making
kokis and
kavums (oil cakes) for afternoon tea. I have never been a fan of either of these traditional Sri Lankan snacks which are popular at festivities, so I was interested to see if I would change my mind after making them ourselves.
Kokis is a deep-fried, crispy and sweet or savoury snack made from rice
flour, coconut milk, beaten eggs and sugar or salt; and
kavums are a deep fried but doughy sweet made from rice flour, coconut milk and
jaggery (Sri Lankan palm sugar). We started by pounding soaked rice in a massive, bucket-sized motor and pestle to make rice flour for both snacks. The runny
kokis batter was then taken outside to their open kitchen which had a wood fired stove with a wok of hot oil on the go. A small fancy shaped solid mould that balanced on a fishing rod-like handle was dipped into the batter and then submerged into the oil until the cooking process disengaged the crispy
kokis from the mould. I was fascinated by the mould and enjoyed the process of frying the
kokis… until the open fire flame got too hot and I bailed out of there.
The
kavums were a bit trickier to make, as the thick sticky dough had to be handled with oiled hands to fashion it into small circles. When deep fried, the dough puffed up into dense doughnut-like balls. We had the
kokis and
kavums with coconut and sesame balls and some very good black tea. It was an enjoyable afternoon
tea and a revelation to me, as I’ve decided I like
kokis. However, I’m still not a fan of the dry and slightly dense
kavums.
We then watched on as
string hoppers (steamed vermicelli-like rice noodles),
pittu and a chicken curry were cooked. The chicken curry was something I was very familiar with, but watching the
string hoppers being made took me right back to my childhood. A rice flour dough was squeezed out of a wooden mould in thin streams of noodles which had to be guided in a circular motion onto bamboo ‘mats’. It was a lot harder and fiddly than it looked, but I think muscle memory from decades ago kicked in, and I didn’t do too badly at it. Making the
pittu required skills that we could never master in one night – where very precise amounts of water were added to a dry mix of rice flour and coconut, and then rubbed together to make a coarse couscous-like mixture. This was spooned into metal cylinders and steamed. In the past, hollow stems of bamboo would have been used, and my family still call the cylindrical utensil a ‘pittu bamboo’.
We then sat out
on their balcony with drinks and chatted as dusk fell around us, while the family cooked the rest of the meal. Dinner consisted of the
string hoppers,
pittu and chicken curry, plus
aloo kiri hodi (potato in coconut milk gravy),
seeni sambol (caramelised onion relish),
lunu miris (onion, chilli and lime relish), red
pol sambol and yellow
pol sambol. It was a really delicious meal, and I was happy to note that they didn’t compromise on the spice levels for us. However, I’m still not a fan of
pittu! Dessert was a
kitul (fish tail palm) flour pudding of sorts in a
jaggery and coconut milk syrup. I wasn’t a fan of the jelly-like pudding, but I loved the syrup.
After thanking our hosts for a truly enjoyable cultural experience, we drove back to our hotel. I’m not quite sure how, but we ended up congregated at the bar again. Steve was watching the Chelsea game, and Damien wanted to watch the England v Ireland rugby game. We were eventually kicked out of the bar, so we moved to the reception lobby where we kept Damien company through the frustrations of streaming the rugby, and the excitement of a very close game. By this time the reception desk had closed down around us (at midnight) and the staff had left, but we hung on until the game finished and Ireland won. Damien was a happy boy! We turned the lights off and locked the doors on the way out. 😊
Next we travel south-east to Bandarawela in highland tea country.
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Simon Peterson
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Kandy
Some friends who visited Sri Lanka many many years ago say that Kandy was a favourite city, and the temple was a highlight. I shall show them your blog, I am sure they will enjoy the wander down memory lane.