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Published: April 18th 2012
The Old parliament
View from hotel roomThe trip to Srilanka was a quick decision and we left on a sunny morning to Colombo the capital of SriLanka. The Flight from Chennai is exactly one hour and we touched down Colombo by 12 noon. We could see the lovely beaches and lush greenery all around. The white sand was visible clearly from the aircraft and it was a wonderful sight.
Some facts on Sri Lanka.
There are 3 main languages - Sinhala, Tamil and English. It constitutes a Buddhist majority of 70 % with Hindu, Christian and Muslim minorities. The country gained independence from Britain in 1948 and also became a Democratic Socialist Republic in 1978. The top exports from Sri lanka are Tea, Textiles, and Gems & Foreign Remittances.
It has the highest concentration of Leopards in the world. Seven of UN's world heritage sites are located in Sri Lanka. It is one among the world’s 25 Biodiversity hot spots. Sri Lanka which is the world's third largest tea producer is also famous for its Ceylonese Sapphire. The country has 1,340 km of tropical coastline.
We checked in at the hotel Galadari and spent the rest of the day in Colombo. It was
Dec 25 th and the city was full of lights and colourful decorations for Christmas. The city reminded us of the colonial style buildings back home at Chennai. The British style buildings typical of the red colour and massively decorated windows were like the spencer’s building and the Higginbotham’s buildings at my home town
Chennai. We went around the city and also visited a Hindu temple on the way. One thing we noticed was, the city was neat, clean and well maintained. From the hotel room window we had a spectacular view of the beach and also the old Parliament house. I shot some snaps from the 10 floor of the hotel. The majestic buildings, lovely beach and the road alongside were indeed a good view to shoot. Some shopping was also possible and we did pick up some Ceylon tea from the Sri Lankan Tea Board. The staff were not very tourist friendly which was evident in the way they sulked to show us the various types of tea. Our chauffeur was a Sinhalese but could speak good English which made our job easier. The vehicle was a Toyota Micro van - quite spacious.
Day 2 was
planned for
Kandy and on the way we stopped over for the visit to the
Pinnawala Elephant Sanctuary. This is on the way to Kandy and spread over a vast area with a river running across. The orphaned elephants -- one's that are hurt and are lost in jungles are brought here and taken care. There is also a mammoth sized elephant which was blind and was really sad to watch. We did take snaps of the herd and it was real fun watching the young one's running between the huge ones. The feeding time is fixed for the baby elephants and we saw the elephant stripping a palm tree.
We did spend some time here and then visited the paper manufacturing unit where paper is made from elephant POO...the dung is mixed with some chemicals and then made a paste , filtered, dried, compressed and colourful sheets of papers are made out of this. In fact this was really an innovation as no trees are felled in making the paper, a way of conservation of nature. Some snaps attached for your viewing.
The next spot was the famous
Tooth relic temple of Sri Lanka, an important temple.
According to Sri Lankan legends, when the Lord Buddha died, his body was cremated in a sandalwood pyre at Kusinagara in India and his left canine tooth was retrieved from the ashes of funeral pyre by Arahat Khema. Khema then gave it to King Brahmadatte for veneration. It became a royal possession in Brahmadatte's country and was kept in the city of Dantapuri (present day Puri in Odisha, India.). It was then smuggledinto to Sri Lanka later.
It is said that Sri Lanka was chosen as the new home for the tooth relic because the Lord Buddha had declared that his religion would be safe in Sri Lanka for 5000 years. Wars were fought to take possession of the relic. To protect it at one point it had to be smuggled into Sri Lanka and was enshrined at the royal palace complex. Warring has been continuous to possess the tooth quite often and the temple was also bombed during the LTTE air raids.
We also visited the royal botanical gardens -
Paredeniya Peradeniya is famous for the Royal Botanical Gardens, Paradeniya, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful botanical garden. It is situated in
a slope of the Mahaweli River. and attracts many visitors from Sri Lanka as well as from abroad.
As each of us had a camera there was no limit for photos and i have selected some good ones (as per my decision!!) It was quite warm at times during the day and now we headed to the hotel had rest and then set off for the most important and must see spot the
SIGRIYA ROCK CASTLE. This is indeed a masterpiece. Dont miss this spot during your tour, though a bit of strain.
The palace stands about 360 metres above mean sea level and 200 metres above the surrounding plain. On the plain below, extending cast and west are two fortified precincts, 90 and 40 hectares in extent. Around the rock itself is a walled citadel' or inner royal precinct, covering an area of about 15 hectares. The climb was a bit tedious and we made it finally. The view from the top was fantastic with miles and miles of greenery around. The whole site reminded me of the famous INCA settlement ruins the Machu Pichu in PERU.
The paintings of damsels were still clear though centuries
have passed.One interesting point is that you can find a snap titled protective rock, just notice the small vertical rocks below the huge boulder. These are raised and kept ready to roll down in case of enemy invasion. How was this rock lifted and these were kept below is a marvel & mystery !!!
There were lots of tourist around the globe and our guide was fluent in English, Russian, Spanish and he was a local Singhalese guy!! The fort had excellent water flow arrangements. There are steps to climb up and at places quite steep and scary. We made it at the top and had lots of snaps all through the way. The fort had four entrances, the lion Paw, elephant & snake. This place was one of the marvellous ancient sites I have ever seen.
This one of the seven UN heritage sites in Srilanka. This part is in the central Sri Lanka and we did not venture towards North after this and the night stay was at
NUWARA ILIYA, altitude 5400 ft. It was very cold and we could feel the sudden change in the weather out here.
The city was founded by Samuel
Baker, the discoverer of Lake Albert and the explorer of the Nile in 1846. Nuwara Elisa’s climate developed becoming the prime sanctuary of the British civil servants and planters in Ceylon. Nuwara Eliya, called Little England then, was also a hill country retreat where the British colonialists spent their pastimes such as fox hunting, deer hunting, elephant hunting, polo, golf and cricket. We visited the local market, golf grounds and went around Nuwara. We did spend some time in the market the vegetables and fruits are pretty costly compared to back home at Chennai. Shopped for some apples and local fruits.
The Sita Amman temple was the first spot where it is believed as per epic Ramayana Sita was first brought here by Ravana after kidnapping. The scenery around was fantastic. We then moved on to the Hakgala Botanical gardens which is considered as the Ashok Vatika or vana where the princess Sita was keptin captivity by the demon king Ravava for a longer time.
Hakgala Botanical garden Hakgala Botanical Garden is situated on the Nuwara Eliya-Badulla main road, 16 km from Nuwara Eliya. The entry ticket was SLR 600 per person being foreighner's.The garden has a cool
temperate climate because of altitude is 5,400 feet above the sea level. Garden established in 1861 as an experimental cultivation of Cinchona, a commercial crop thriving at the time.
The Ramayana epic says Sri Lankan demon King Ravana after abducting Sita, kept her hidden in this area and area was offered to Sita as a pleasure garden, the place finds mention in the Ramayana as Ashok Vatika. It’s a vast garden and we could not cover the whole place as it would take one full day! The heat was also picking up and kids were not very keen to walk around, we settled under the shade (perhaps where Sita wandered in loneliness thousands of years back!!) Annual visitors are over 6 lakhs!.
After this we headed to the
Ravana falls, the majestic falls falling from the top of a cliff. This is also one of the spots where the king Ravana had hidden Sita. We did not take bath here as the rocks were slippery but did climb up to a certain height. We were quite hungry by now and had to open the bread and fruit pack we had ready. Being vegetarians we could not get much
food on the way and had to carry on our own.
The evening we visited the Katargama Murukan temple ( Hindu temple ) but the temple timing was at 6.30 pm and we reached by 4.30 pm so not keen on waiting for two hours hence proceeded to Bentota one of the world/s best beaches. It was here we spotted a huge monitor on the road gently crossing and we did not miss an instant snap of this.
The Tissa Lake on the way was indeed superb with thousands of birds nesting in the centre of the lake on huge trees. The lake was along the road and we spent some time here. The night stay was in
Bentota and morning was a leisure time for all of us after 4 days of continous travel during day time though we took break in between.
We took out time to visit the local
Turtle hatchery at Kasargode and also spent some time at the water sports centre. It was quite relaxing. The Villa resort in Bentota was amazing and top class. I was informed by the front office that Paul Mc Carney stayed here and admired it very
much. There was an abandoned rail track behind the resort and it opened to the beach front. The white sand and silent beache was a class apart. We were used to the crowded beaches back home with shops and stalls around but this was a different experience altogether. The snaps will tell you the rest.
After the night's stay here we proceeded to
Negombo on our last leg of the journey. This again is a fishing village with many resorts along the coast. The hotel here was not up to mark and we spent some time on the beach , purchased some trinkets on the beach and then it was time to say good bye to Sri Lanka and we headed to the airport to take the afternoon flight back to Chennai.
Do take time to view the snaps and i know there are many and i am sure you all will like it.
It was a splendid trip and we bought lots of memories back home to rememebr for years.
Cheers,
Ramz.
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Ram Narayanan
non-member comment
Ramayana reference
ur blog on ashok vatica is a slap on the face of those people who question the existence of rama and sita. till now the places referred in valmiki ramayana are existing not only in india but also in srilanka. i am happy i have a witness of the same in my office.thank u for the info sir.