June 16-22, 2014: Dambulla and Sigiriya

In Polonnaruwa on the morning of the 16th, I watched a documentary on the ruins at the museum and then sat along the lake to enjoy the brisk, cool breeze one last time before leaving at 11 on a bus bound for Dambulla, 40 miles west.  The one and a half hour bus ride passed through rolling hills and by three tanks surrounded by forest, including a national park said to hold lots of elephants.  Dambulla is an ugly town along a busy highway, but I found a good guesthouse and after lunch visited a museum devoted to Sri Lankan painting over the centuries.  The wind was blowing and the main street dusty.  I retreated to my room and read for most of the rest of the afternoon.

Dambulla is famous for its cave temples built into a crevice in a huge rock hill looming over the town.  The next morning soon after 8 I began the 300 or so foot climb up stairs and the rock face to reach the temples, starting on the roadside where a modern hundred foot high golden statue of Buddha stands guard, sitting atop a three story Buddhist Museum that you enter through the mouth of a lion like beast.  Climbing up, I could see the volcanic plug of Sigiriya and the adjacent mountain of Pidurangala 12 miles northeast.  Lots of macaques were out and about along the path and fun to watch.

The crevice is maybe half way up the rock and now separated into five different cave temples, with man made walls along the front and between each of the caves.  A pretty whitewashed colonnade and portico fronts the caves, with views of forested hills and valleys beyond.  The cave  temples date back to the first century B.C., built by a grateful king who hid there from invaders from India, but were extensively renovated over the centuries, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Kandyan kings.  They are filled with statues and murals.

The first cave on the right as you enter holds an almost 50 foot long reclining Buddha carved out of solid rock, with his disciple Ananda at his feet.  Some gilding remains on the Buddha's elbow and there are murals on the walls.

The second cave is the most magnificent.  It is huge, 170 feet long, 75 feet wide, with a sloping roof that reaches 23 feet high.  It seems every square inch is decorated.  The sides and back are lined with various Buddha statues, sitting, standing, and reclining.  A small dagoba sits near one end, circled with Buddhas. Two kings are featured.  A wooden statue of the 1st century king who established the cave temples has a prominent position while Nissankamalla, the last great king of Polonnaruwa, is wedged into a corner and hard to see.  Besides dozens of Buddha statues, there are statues of various Hindu gods, acting as protectors of the Buddha.

The walls, and especially the ceiling, are covered with spectacular murals.  Most prominent are two depictions of the Temptations of Mara, showing the demon Mara's attempt to distract Buddha as he sat under the bodhi tree.  The first shows an army of demons surrounding the giant painting of Buddha under the stylized bodhi tree.  They shoot arrows at him, but the arrows reverse course.  Snakes entangle the necks of the demons.  Mara on his elephant stands in the upper right corner, while in the lower left corner a man is falling off his elephant.

Next to this giant mural on the ceiling is another, with Buddha now tempted by the beautiful and seductive daughters of Mara.  Finally, another giant mural on the ceiling shows the now enlightened Buddha preaching to a heavenly assemblage of gods, including some recognizably Hindu ones.  In another area on the walls and ceiling are various panels with scenes from Buddha's life and past lives, including lots of figures of people and horses and the like.  One big section shows his parinirvana under a tree, as he reclines and leaves his earthly body for Nirvana.  In another area on the cave floor stands a pot fed by a constant drip from the ceiling of the cave, the water used for religious ceremonies.

At 10:30 the keepers ushered us out of Cave 2 because they were about to hold a fifteen minute puja in each of the cave temples.  I sat outside with the other tourists next to a lotus pond with purple and pink lotus flowers growing in the pond.

When the temples reopened, I visited Cave 3, built by a Kandyan king in the 18th century.  It is the second finest temple and quite high, with its sloping ceiling reaching over 30 feet high.  It contains a meditating Buddha and a reclining Buddha carved out of solid rock, along with many other Buddhas and a statue of the king who commissioned the cave.  There are more colorful and interesting murals.  In fact, the statues and murals are all very colorful in all the caves.

In progression I visited Caves 4 and 5, both relatively small and not as fine as 2 and 3, but still very interesting, full of colorful statues and murals in more confined spaces.  On my way back to the entrance I revisited Caves 3 and 2.  I ended up spending more than four hours in the caves.  At times they were fairly crowded, mostly with Japanese and Chinese tour groups.  But at other times I had the whole cave to myself.

The sky was clouding up as I made my way down and I spent some time watching the juvenile macaques wrestling with each other, with some spectacular jumps and falls.  I visited the Buddhist Museum after entering the lion's mouth under the giant gold Buddha.  It contained some interesting things, including a diorama of the Kandy Esala Perahera, with hundreds of figures of men and fifteen or twenty figures of beautifully decorated elephants, and a series of modern paintings of Buddha's life, with a seeming emphasis on the pleasures of the flesh that he had to overcome.

After lunch I took a bus south about 12 miles through hilly terrain before getting off and walking about 20 minutes to a reconstructed temple called Nalanda Gedige on the shores of a tank.  The temple would have been inundated by the construction of the tank and so was dismantled in 1980 and rebuilt on a rise above the new lake shore.  It is in a very pretty wooded area.  The small stone temple is pure south Indian in style, but seems to have always been a Buddhist temple.  A Buddha stands in its very small sanctuary.  On the exterior various human faces are carved onto small roundels.  On the base is a very faded three person erotic ancient carving, said to be the only one in Sri Lanka.

The sky was cloudy and dark, with a strong wind, and it was very pleasant there at the temple under the trees above the lake.  I walked back to the highway, with lots of flowers along the way.  I spotted a giant squirrel high up a tree.  It seemed to have spotted me, too, and quickly scampered along branches until I lost sight of it.   About 5:30 I caught a bus for the half hour ride back to Dambulla, with a few sprinkles on the way.

The next morning, a cloudy one, I made the long, unpleasant walk along Dambulla's main street to the bus stand and boarded a bus heading north to Kekirawa, 12 miles away.  After a half hour or so wait, it finally left and reached Kekirawa 45 minutes later.  From Kekirawa I boarded another bus for the 10 mile trip west to Aukana on a beautiful rural road, in large part along the bund, or levee, of the 5th century Kala Wewa tank.  Big trees lined both sides of the narrow road atop the bund.  The bus came off the bund to pass the dam and then reclimbed onto it.  Eventually, green rice paddies, fed by the tank's waters, appeared below to the west.  The last two miles or so the bus drove down off the bund and through the rice paddies to the village of Aukana, where I got off and walked a half mile or so to see a 40 foot high limestone Buddha dating from some time in the last half of the first millennium.  The ruins of walls that once enclosed the statue stand around its feet.

I spent almost an hour there, looking around and sitting under a tree up on a platform with a good view of the Buddha.  Some other tourists passed through, as did a big group of mostly white clad Sri Lankans.  A motorcyclist gave me a ride back to the bus stop in Aukana village, where I caught a bus back to Kekirawa, again enjoying the beautiful scenery en route, and then took a bus back to Dambulla, arriving about 3 for a late lunch.

At 4:30 I left on the bus for the short ride, a little more than half an hour, to Sigiriya.  Sigiriya is just a village at the base of the spectacular former citadel and monastery situated on a towering volcanic plug, 500 feet or more above the surrounding forested plains.  I checked into a very nice guesthouse and walked through the forest towards the citadel.  I walked along the restored southern and western walls and moat enclosing the flat land west of the almost vertical volcanic rock to the main entry on the west.  Macaques and langurs were in search of food before their nightly rest and there were lotus flowers and pads in the moat and ponds nearby.  The forested area is beautiful.  In the very late afternoon there was some sun but clouds filled most of the sky.  I walked back to my hotel and dinner just before dark.  Sirigiya is a little higher than Dambulla, perhaps a hundred feet or so.  I think it is at about 500 feet elevation.  But with its rural setting it is wonderfully cool at night.  I slept very comfortably under a mosquito net, though bugs weren't a great problem, with my windows open.  I was later told to be careful at night, as a wild elephant sometimes comes around at night.

The next morning I entered the Sigiriya ruins just after 8 from the west gate.  The citadel hid the sun to the east and the sky was mostly cloudy, though soon the sun came out.  The caves at the base of the volcanic plug were first used for religious purposes in the 3rd century B.C.  In the 5th century A.D., however, according to the ancient chronicles, the site became the palace of King Kassapa (473-491), who had killed his father and driven his brother, the legitimate heir, into exile in India.  He built palaces both atop the peak and on the flat terrain below, with a new capital city, mostly to the east of the peak.  Supposedly, the construction was finished in just seven years.  In 591 Kassapa's brother returned with an army to claim the throne.  Rather than hold out in his mountain fortress, Kassapa fought his brother on the plains.  In the ensuing battle, Kassapa's elephant is said to have bolted, leading his army to think he was retreating.  They did the same and the king was cut off from his troops.  He killed himself rather than face capture.  His brother, now king, returned the capital to Anuradhapura and left Sigiriya to be a monastery, which it remained until it was abandoned in the 12th century, and then forgotten until modern times.

On the flat and then increasingly sloping terrain west of the peak are gardens, first water gardens, including some ancient fountains, and the remains of palaces.  Beyond are the boulder gardens, with a maze of pathways through giant boulders among lots of trees just below the peak.  Many of the rocks are grooved where structures once stood against them.  Some caves still contain fragments of murals and inscriptions.  It is wonderful place to wander about.  One big boulder is split in half.  On top of one half a pool is carved into the stone, filled with water and yellow blossoms from the nearby trees on that morning.  Below is the other half of the roundish boulder, with a flat top facing the sky.  Atop this flat space is carved what appears to be a throne.  There are also post holes for the now vanished wooden pillars that held the roof over what might have been a council chamber, or perhaps a hall for monks.   There are several paths and stairways among the boulders, but the main stairway heads up through an arch of two boulders and reaches the terrace gardens, with good views from there up the almost vertical cliff towards the top.

Shortly after you reach the base of the peak, with its steep sides running almost straight up, two metal spiral staircases connect with a shallow indentation or cave in the cliff face above.  Painted on the walls in the cave are the so-called Sigiriya Damsels, paintings of beautiful women dating from the 5th century.  There are something like 18 of them, several of them, maybe eight or so, beautifully preserved.  Two of them were vandalized by a madman in 1967.  The narrow ledge does not run the whole cave and a metal extension is bolted onto the rock face on the far left, seemingly quite a precarious perch.  Cloth coverings hang over the opening.  The space was crowded when I first arrived, but I stayed quite a while to enjoy the paintings and at times had the place to myself, along with the two guards.  I walked back and forth along the narrow ledge.

The damsels have what are called wasp waists and large breasts and are adorned with jewels, flowers, and headdresses.  This is uncertainty about who they portray.  One theory is that they are the king's concubines, or maybe concubines and their servants, as some of the women seem to be attending to others.  Another theory is that they are portraits of apsaras, heavenly nymphs, especially because they are portrayed only from the waist up, rising out of clouds.  They hold flowers and plates of fruit and are very appealing, appearing singly or in pairs.  They each look quite distinct, all quite beautiful.  There is some speculation that one is African, another Mongolian, and so on.

I walked down one of the spiral staircase to the walkway along the cliff enclosed by what is called the Mirror Wall, covered in some sort of 5th century, somewhat reflective plaster.  Along the inside of the very long wall is graffiti dating from the era after Kassapa's downfall when the place was again a monastery and early tourists came to view the damsels.  There are something like 1500 decipherable comments in medieval Sinhalese.  Unfortunately, there is also some modern graffiti on the wall.

From the end of the pathway behind the mirror wall an iron walkway bolted onto the rock face takes you to a flight of steps that lead up to the Lion Platform, a wide space on the rock's north side, which was also accessible by stairs approaching from the north.  A giant brick statue of a lion stood here.  Now only the plaster covered paws remain, but the ancient stairway entered the lion's open mouth to proceed up to the top of the rock.  Now a metal stairway, including platforms of stairs bolted into the sheer rock face, lead up to the top.  It seems quite precarious as you head up, with the thin metal steps bolted into the rock.  The rock face has the scars of the ancient stairs up, now long gone.  Wasp nests cling to the rock face in one area.  A sign below advises to be silent and still in the event of a wasp attack.

The summit is quite large, almost four acres, once covered with the buildings and gardens.  Now mostly foundations remain, along with several pools, including one large one about 70 feet by 90 feet.  The foundations, however, don't show any evidence of post holes, so some think there never was a palace up there, just platforms for meditating monks.

My altimeter showed the top about 550 feet above the plains below.  The top slopes down from the north to south and west to east, with the highest platform, of what is assumed to be the main part of the palace, in the northwest.  I reached the summit at about 11:30 after a slow walk up and the noonday sun was bright.  Tourists were scattered all over the top.  The views, of course, are spectacular.  I looked down to the water and boulder gardens below and then explored the top for about an hour.  As mentioned, there isn't much but foundations and a few pools, but stairways and paths lead all over and the views are great.

After exploring in the noonday sun I sat under a lone tree near the top and enjoyed the view.  Just about everyone looks around and then heads back down, but I decided to spend most of the afternoon up there enjoying the views.  The wind blew fiercely, especially on the western rim, almost knocking you down.  I was comfortable sitting under the tree, eating a sandwich I had brought with me.  The sun was out most of the time, but at times behind clouds, especially later in the afternoon.  For a while, from about noon until 2, the top was almost deserted, before the afternoon tourists began to arrive.

To the south are jagged hills far away, with a lake (tank) in the foreground.  To the east is a wide expanse of jungle with smaller hills in the distance.  North is a stony hill called Pidurangala, perhaps a mile away and almost as high as Sigiriya.  The plains extend out to the west, with the gardens in the foreground.  I spotted Dambulla's stony hill to the southwest.  With the afternoon sun in the west, the best views from my perch under the tree were to the south and east.  I did take a couple of walks around when I grew tired of sitting. On one I spied two little figures atop stony Pidurangala.

About 4:30, after five hours on top, I began my descent, retracing my steps to near the Mirror Wall and then taking a different path down into the boulder gardens.  I wandered through the boulder gardens and eventually into the water gardens, where I walked almost back to the entrance for the view of Sigiriya's western face in the late afternoon sun.  I sat here and there to enjoy the views and then walked back to and through the boulder gardens before exiting via the southern entrance to the site after 6.

The next morning before and after breakfast I sat on the veranda of my room and watched the goings on in the garden in front of me.  A troop of macaque monkeys came through, and there were lots of butterflies and birds.  No elephant, though.  About 9:30 I walked to the Sigiriya museum in a huge concrete Japanese built building near the main western entry to the ruins.  My entry ticket for the ruins was also good for the museum, but now expired, but the women at the entrance didn't check the date.  The museum was very good, not for the artifacts inside but for the models and explanations.  It contained a wonderful model of the whole site and videos imagining how the summit looked as a palace.  About ten of the graffiti on the Mirror Wall were translated, one referring to 500 damsels, so there is speculation that a major part of the western face of the rock was painted with them.

After an hour or so in the museum I walked around the pretty area nearby, with a couple of ponds full of lotus pads and flowers.  In one pond the flowers are all pink; in the other all white.  In an area with some gnarly trees I spotted a monitor lizard, perhaps two and a half feet long, being chased by two dogs.  It finally stood its ground and the dogs held off.  I chased them away and then watched the monitor for a while as it crawled around on the ground and eventually climbed a tree.

I came back for lunch about 12:30 and spent the early afternoon on my veranda.  About 3:30 I walked back to the ruins, along the south, west, and north walls and then north to Pidurangala, the rocky peak just north of Sigiriya, about a two mile walk in total.  Entering via a temple along the dirt road, I climbed up a rugged path with many jagged rock cut steps past boulders and the edge of the cliff face to the ruins of a cave temple under a rock overhang, about a 300 foot climb.  A reclining Buddha, with its top half restored in bricks over the stone lower half, lies under the overhang.  From there I made a somewhat difficult up through and on top of boulders another hundred feet or so to reach the top of Pidurangala, to be rewarded with spectacular views of Sigiriya and the surrounding countryside.  I had my first peak of Sigiriya through a crevice in the rocks as I was climbing.

The top of Pidurangala is a huge stone sloping plateau, except for at the very top where there is a small plot of long grass and cactus.  The wind from the west was very strong, seemingly almost strong enough to blow you over.  I enjoyed the great views and walked all over the sloping stony plateau before settling down near the top to sit and enjoy the view not only of Sigirya from its northern side but also the whole surrounding area.  On Sigiriya's north face I could see the tiny dots of people making the climb up and down the metal staircases that reach the top.   The wind blew quite hard, though not as hard as on the western periphery of the rock plateau, and I enjoyed sitting there and enjoying the views.  A few other tourists came and went. About 6 three others and I made our way down.  I walked back to my guest house, making a short cut through the ruins just underneath the rock and through the boulder gardens.  At 6:30 no one was on guard duty to prevent entry.  I made it back just before dark.

The next morning I again enjoyed just sitting on my veranda.  I ate a late breakfast at the guest house, as usual, finishing about 10.  I spent a big chunk of the middle part of the day in an internet cafe and later on my veranda.  A big troop of macaques wandered through the garden as I sat there.  About 4:30 I finally roused myself to take a walk and headed towards the ruins.  Near the spot where I had exited the two previous days, the southern entrance, I stood for a while watching a troop of about 20 langur monkeys, several with babies clinging to their undersides.  I love to watch the very graceful langurs leap from tree to tree and run along the ground with their very long tails uplifted and curled.  While I was watching the langurs, another troop of macaques was also foraging just down along the dirt road.

After the monkeys disappeared into the forest, I continued walking towards the main western entrance.  A cormorant was drying its wings while standing atop a pole stuck in the moat among lotus pads and flowers.  I walked around the lotus ponds near the entrance and then walked back towards the village, taking a short detour just before dark to see the southern face of Sigiriya from the road.

The next morning I again sat on my veranda until 9 or so.  I watched the usual birds and butterflies, including a small flock of small brown birds who were foraging together, alighting together on the ground for a while. Two mongooses strolled maybe 30 or 40 feet in front of me.  One hissed at the other and then began digging at the base of a tree.  One and then the other soon spotted me, though I tried to sit still.  They both peered at me for awhile and then decided to move on, heading towards the stream off to the left of my room.  A little while later I spotted a third mongoose, or maybe one of the ones I had seen previously, walking along the stream and then into the forest in the other direction.  Later, I had two more mongoose sightings, one just briefly along the stream, but one much longer.  The mongoose scampered through the brush at the edge of the garden, making its way to a basin with water in it, from which he quickly drank before moving on.  I have also seen a few of the macaques drinking from that basin.  They sit on the edge, look around, and then lean down to drink, popping up quickly if they hear anything suspicious.

After breakfast I again sat on my veranda and a troop of maybe 20 macaques came through the garden.  A dog chased some of them and I saw one of the larger macaques face off against the dog, which didn't approach.  Most of the macaques headed into the trees, and I watched several little ones, not much bigger than the babies clinging to their mothers, make spectacular long jumps, one after the other, from one tree to a spindly branch on a smaller tree.  Their arms and legs seemed to wave in the air before they caught the little branch.  The troop headed to the stream and hung about on the banks and in the trees along the banks.  I could hear but not see peacocks.

I again spent the middle part of the day in an internet cafe before heading to lunch.  On the way to lunch I spied an elephant lying in the water of the stream that runs through the village.  He seemed to be sleeping in the water, with his mahout on the bank under a tree.  After I finished my lunch, about 3:30, he was still there, in a deeper part of the stream lying on his side, with his mahout lying on top of him.  The mahout soon roused the elephant, had him lie down in a different part of the stream, and then began bathing him.  He used part of a coconut husk to scrape his skin and he scrapped it fairly roughly, though the elephant didn't seem to mind, and I suspect enjoyed it.  He coiled his trunk over his small tusk on one side, occasionally uncoiling it and then you could see just the tip out of the water.  At times his eyes were open while at other times he closed them.

The mahout scrubbed his sides, back, and all over his head, including his ears and trunk.  Every once in a while he took a long knife and recut the coconut husk.  I guess the elephant's rough skin dulled the husk fibers.  The mahout's assistant, a young guy, had the task of scrubbing the elephant's backside.  Halfway through, they had the elephant get up and lie on his other side.  At one point he lifted his tail and emitted a loud fart.  Standing on the stream bank maybe 30 or 40 feet away, I didn't smell anything.

Finally, they had the elephant stand up in the water.  While lying in the water he had extended his penis and it looked like it may very well have touched the ground if he were standing on ground rather than in the water. After a while, he withdrew it into whatever place elephants withdraw their penises.  The mahout and his assistant then scrubbed the elephant's feet, having him lift them one by one.  After the bath was over, more than an hour after it had started, the mahout had the elephant use his trunk to lift several iron chains that had been on the stream bank over his neck.  Then the mahout had the elephant lift one of his front legs to allow him to use it to climb onto his back.  He led him out of the stream, up the bank, and then down the road.

I followed them to where the elephant seems to be kept, near the southern end of Sigiriya Rock.  I continued walking along the road as it turned towards the rock and then away from it, heading east.  Soon a dirt road that turned into a jungle path led off to the north, just under the eastern face of the rock, with troops of langurs and macaques along the way.  I could rarely see the rock slopes of the rock through the trees as I made my way to just below the Lion Terrace on the north.  I reached another dirt road and walked along it through the jungle first east and then retracing my steps west until I reached the moat and walls of the enclosure.  I walked to the western entrance and from there back to the village.  The power went out for more than half an hour just after dark, but it was very pleasant sitting on my veranda in the dark.

June 12-15, 2014: Batticaloa and Polonnaruwa

On the morning of the 12th I took a tuktuk from Arugam Bay in time to leave on the 10 o'clock bus headed north along the coast to Batticaloa, 60 miles and more than three hours away.  The bus was jammed full at first, though I had a window seat.  We passed through conuntryside with dry, yellowing grass and at least a couple of army camps.  The east coast of Sri Lanka, along with the far north, was heavily contested during the 1983-2009 civil war, with the government only gaining complete control in the east in 2007.  Pottuvil is said to be the diving line between majority Sinhalese areas to the south and majority Tamil and Muslim areas north along the east coast.  Lots of people, men and women, were in Islamic dress.  (My stay in Arugam Bay had included the incongruous sight of bikini clad foreigners walking along the main road with crowds of school girls completely covered in white, with white head coverings.

There were only a few ocean views as the bus headed north, usually over sandy coastline.  Further north the terrain to the west became greener, with acres of bright green rice paddies.  Far to the west I could see the outline of the hills.  Lots of ponds and lagoons stand along the road and there are a surprising number of busy, congested towns on the way.

The small town of Batticaloa is situated along the various shores of a big, serpentine lagoon, which the bus crossed twice before reaching the bus station.  I found a hotel, had lunch, and then walked to the old fort on the shores of the lagoon.  It now houses government offices, but is open to the public and I spent an hour or so looking around, walking along the walls, with good views of the lagoon, and along the creaky wooden floor of the second story of the veranda of the old two story Dutch era building inside.  This lovely old building has very high ceilings, doors, and wooden shutters.  The two story veranda has very thick white Doric columns.  This day was a full moon day, Poson Poya, and thus a government holiday, so the offices were shut.  On the walls sits an old British cannon, marked "GR," so 1830 or before.  Two older cannons, much more worn, stand at the entrance to the fort. 

From the fort I walked to the old part of town to see a few churches and a century old Catholic school building.  Two of the churches were blaring out scratchy amplified music, proving that Christian churches can be just as annoying as mosques and Buddhist temples, though at least it was music, of a sort, rather than prayers.  Almost every evening about sunset in Sri Lanka you are subjected to the amplified wailing of Buddhist prayers from temples.

The afternoon was hot and eventually I made my way to a spot where I had a good view of the fort across the lagoon and sat there until past sunset.  I was joined by two other tourists who had been working as physical therapy volunteers at an orphanage east of Kandy for four months.  After dark and before going to dinner, we walked to the local Buddhist temple, where large illuminated displays constructed for Poson Poya were on display.  A newspaper photographer for the Daily News, a rabidly nationalistic, pro-government newspaper, asked if he could take photos of us gazing at one of the displays for the newspaper.

The next morning about 9:30 I left on a bus bound for Polunnaruwa, a 60 mile journey inland that took almost three hours.  The sky was cloudy and the wind was blowing quite a bit, creating whitecaps on the large lagoon as we headed along it out of town headed north, or rather northwest, along the coast.  The first part of the journey along the coast, though we never saw the ocean, was very slow, with lots of stops for people getting on and off.  When the bus finally headed west into the interior it was just the opposite, almost deserted.  At first the terrain was very dry, with yellowing grass and only low trees and bushes.  The road followed the railroad, with a few small stations along the way and views of the faraway hills to the southwest.  Further in, the landscape became much greener, with higher trees and thicker forest.

In Polonnaruwa I found a hotel and had lunch before looking around.  Polonnaruwa was a medieval capital of Sri Lanka, with the 12th century the height of its glory.  There are extensive ruins but foreigners have to pay about $25 to visit them, so I decided to put that off to the next day and see some of the ruins that you don't have to pay to see.  About 3 I walked to the edge of the large (something like ten square miles) tank, or reservoir, on the edge of town, with a wonderfully cool wind blowing off the lake on a cloudy day.  The tank was built by the city's greatest king, but was breached in the 13th century after the downfall of the city and only rebuilt in the 20th century.  On the edge is a rest house where Queen Elizabeth stayed in 1954 and nearby are some interesting ruins right along the tank, including what appear to be royal baths, fed by water from the tank, a small summer palace on a very small island just offshore, the foundations of a larger building, an audience hall or palace, and the much better preserved remains of a former council chamber dating from the time of Polonnaruwa's last great ruler, Nissankamalla, who ruled from 1187 to 1196.  Its wooden roof is gone, but stone columns atop a high base remain.  At one end is the king's lion throne, in the shape of a standing lion.  He sat on its back.  The stone columns are inscribed in medieval Sinhalese prescribing which court officials sat where.

The ruins were filled with local people that afternoon, most heading to the road that passes the main section of the ruins.  An annual perahera, or religious procession, was scheduled for that evening, and people were already staking out choice spots along the route.  At 4 in the afternoon there were already thousands of people sitting along the route, with dozens of vendors attending to them.  I watched the scene for a while and then headed back through the ruins I had just walked through and back to the rest house on the tank.  From there I walked south along the lake, with a very strong wind blowing, which felt wonderful.  A few cormorants, egrets, and pond herons stood on the rocks along the shore, usually taking off at my approach into the strong winds.  It was pleasant along the tank, but with a lot of traffic as bus and truck loads of local people were heading into town for the perahera.  After about half an hour I reached some more ruins along the tank, including a quite realistic statue of a bearded, dhoti clad man about 12 feet high.  He is holding something usually thought to be a palm leaf manuscript.  Another theory is that it depicts Parakramabahu, Polonnaruwa's greatest king, holding the yoke of office.  Another theory is that whoever it depicts is holding a slice of papaya.  Nearby are brick monastic ruins, including four small dagobas and a central circular chamber thought to be a library.

I walked back the way I had come along the tank and back in town walked a ways along the perahera route, now even more jammed with people.  I bought some rambutan and went to sit in the ruins near the cool lake, where I ate several of the rambutan as the sky became dark.  I walked back to my hotel, where the street was now lined with people, all looking rather curiously at me as I walked by.  I ate dinner at a little restaurant on the street, watching perahera marchers, plus a float and an elephant festooned with electrical lights, headed to the perahera's starting point at a temple in the ruins to the north. 

After dinner I walked along the parade route a bit just to see all the spectators, thousands, in fact probably tens of thousands, of them.  About 10 the first of the perahera marchers reach my hotel area, where I was standing.  First came men and boys cracking big whips and others twirling hoops of fire.  A few fireworks were set off in the street.  These first marchers were followed by more very slowly marching groups, mostly of youngsters and young adults, all in elaborate costumes, mostly Kandyan style, but also some other styles.  They would stop and dance along the way.  There were lots of Kandyan drummers and some oboists, too.  There were also lots of elephants.  I would guess there were about 15 of them in total.  All wore beautifully embroidered blankets over their backs and most had little lights attached to the coverings on their heads and trunks.  I wonder how much those lights bother them.  One of the first elephants lifted its tail and dropped watermelon size dollops of pachyderm poop right in the middle of the route.  The dancers just behind did their best to dance around the pile.  Soon a man with a shovel came along and quickly shoveled the poop towards the crowd sitting on the other side of the street.  So some lucky onlookers got to watch the parade behind a big mound of elephant poop.

The perahera was very slow moving and I was getting tired as I watched.  Soon after 11 a very big illuminated elephant with an illuminated shelter on its back came along.  Under the shelter on the elephant's back sat a golden casket, no doubt holding a relic, though whether of bone, teeth, hair, or, my personal favorite, sweat, I don't know.  More marching groups and elephants came along, including another big one with a shelter and relic casket on its back.  Among the marchers came a few older men in elaborate Kandyan costumes and Buddhist monks in orange.  Some people, often with sleepy children, were beginning to leave towards midnight, but most remained.  Just after midnight I finally headed back to my hotel for a very welcome cold shower and then bed under a mosquito net.  I could still hear the Kandyan drummers as I quickly fell asleep.

I had planned to get up early the next day to explore Polonnaruwa's ruins.  The $25 entry fee is good for only one day and there is a lot to see.  But after going to bed so late, I slept till after 8 and didn't get up until after 9.  The day was sunny and I waited until 10:30 or so to have breakfast at a breezy restaurant near the lake.  I spent most of the afternoon reading and at an internet cafe and then about 4 walked again to the ruins near the lake that I had visited the afternoon before.  Unlike the day before, they were almost deserted and very quiet.  After sunset I sat by the lake to enjoy both the wind off the lake and the rosy glow of the post sunset sky until dark.  Bats flew over the lake and over me, heading to the north and northeast.

The next day I did spend exploring the ruins, renting a bike for the day and entering soon after they opened at 8.  Anuradhapura, to the north, had been Sri Lanka capital for more than a millennium, but subject to many south Indian invasions.  The great Chola King Rajaraja I destroyed it in 993 and moved the capital of his Hindu kingdom to Polonnaruwa.  The Sinhalese King Vijayabahu recaptured the city in 1056 and made it his capital in preference to the destroyed Anuradhapura.  It was also further south, and thus further away, from the invaders from the north.  Most of the ruins date from the reign of Vijayabahu's grandson, Parakramabahu the Great, who reigned from 1153 to 1186.  He conquered the entire island and even launched military expeditions to south India and Burma.  And he began a gargantuan series of public works, creating and restoring tanks and making Polonnaruwa into a great city.  Oddly, he was succeeded by his Tamil son-in-law, Nissankamalla (1087-1096) who continued building and launched a military expedition into south India against the Pandyans of Madurai.  Following his death the city and kingdom rapidly declined, with internal strife and more Indian invasions, and for one period of 40 years in the 13th century was ruled by a brutal Tamil mercenary who neglected the upkeep of the tanks, upon which northern Sri Lanka's agriculture rely.  The city was abandoned in 1293, swallowed up by jungle, and pretty much forgotten until modern times.

I biked first to the Citadel, on the southern end but the heart of the ancient city.  Inside the restored walls are the remains of of a palace, council chamber, and baths.  Most impressive are the two and a half story brick remains of Parakramabahu's palace, said to have been seven stories high (the top stories were of wood) with a thousand rooms, though the number of rooms is an exaggeration.  The council chamber is on a plinth to the east with columns and friezes of lions, dwarfs, and elephants.  The morning was sunny and the place was already filling up with busloads of locals on a Sunday.

A big troop of langurs watched as I bicycled north from the citadel, passing a small Hindu temple dating from the Pandyan occupation of the early 13th century, to the Quadrangle, the most extensive collection of ruins.
This rectangular walled enclosure, raised above the surrounding area, was the religious heart of the city, where the tooth relic was kept.  The most impressive building is a circular, columned relic house, with stairways decorated with dwarfs, lions, and the mythical makaras.  Moonstones, carved semi-circular stones, stand at the base of the four entries and are decorated with geese, elephants, and horses, to be stepped on as you enter.  Some, though not here, also depict lions and bulls, but in later times the bulls were removed in order not to upset Hindus, as were the lions, as a symbol of royalty.  There are several other interesting ruins in the Quadrangle, and I spent most of the morning there looking around, leaving at noon.  One 30 foot long slab of granite, weighing 25 tons and transported from 60 miles away, has its top covered with an inscription extolling the glories of Nisankamalla.  A nearby sign translates part of it, including a reference to his invasion of south India and how the kingdoms there bought him off by offering him gold, gifts, and maidens.  The Quadrangle was very crowded at first, but thinned out as the morning wore on as busloads of tourists came and went.

I biked back to town for a quick lunch and then spent a little less than an hour in the museum before returning to the ruins about 1:30.  I biked further north from the Quadrangle, first stopping to see a small Hindu temple, the earliest of Polonnaruwa's ruins, built by Rajaraja I.  Further north are the ruins of the monastic quarter of the city, with dagobas (stupas), temples, and other buildings.  There are lots of trees among the ruins so it was easy to find shade.  One dagoba is 170 feet high, the fourth largest in Sri Lanka.  (The three largest are all in Anuradhapura.)  Further north is a building with towering brick walls housing a now headless giant standing Buddha.  Just north of it is a dagoba now painted bright white, with a huge orange ribbon tied around it.  Just to the south is a monastic hall with four remarkable moonstones.  As I left to head further north, I watched two macaques, one grooming the other.  They did not seem at all upset by my presence and let me get to within a foot or two of them.  The monkeys here live in part off the garbage left behind by tourists and are well used to them.

My next stop, at about 4:30 as I slowly made my way north, was the spectacular Gal Vihara, a massive granite outcrop with four Buddhas carved out of it.  It was thronged with Sri Lankan tourists.  The first two Buddhas on the left are sitting, the smaller of the two behind a wire mesh and a very scratched plexiglass window that makes viewing difficult.  The finest two are on the right, a sorrowful looking standing Buddha and a reclining Buddha almost 50 feet long.  All four, but especially the last two, are beautifully sculpted, with thin veins of black rock streaking the predominantly white rock.  The standing, sorrowful Buddha, was once thought to be Buddha's disciple Ananda, standing beside his master as he attains Nirvana.  Sockets in the rock wall reveal they all used to be in separate enclosures.  Now a metal roof hovers over them.

After spending about half an hour at Gal Vihara (you can climb up a rock facing the statues), I was running out of time.  It was now after 5.  I pedaled further north a mile or so on a dirt road to the Tivanka Image House, with another headless giant Buddha inside, along with some dim, but very interesting murals.  This is the northernmost of the ruins, perhaps two and a half miles from the Citadel.  I biked back to Gal Vihara, stopping on the way to see a stone bathing pond, with five concentric rings in the shape of a lotus, and the brick remains of a dagoba that would have been the world's largest but was never finished, built by Tamil prisoners and now only partially excavated and covered with dirt, bushes, and trees.

I made my way back to the Gal Vihara just after 6 and it was now much less crowded.  I spent another half hour there and then biked back, stopping at the lake near my hotel just at dark.  Bats again flew overhead as I enjoyed the beauty of the sky and the brisk wind.

June 7-11, 2014: Badulla, Monaragala, and Arugam Bay

The morning of the 7th was cloudy and windy, with some rain, in Nuwara Eliya.  I actually enjoyed this last installment of cool weather before leaving on a bus headed east to Badulla about 11:30.  Light rain fell as the bus left Nuwara Eliya, but less than five miles down the valley to the southeast the sun was out.  As we descended we passed more vegetable gardens than tea gardens.  The bus descended the valley below Hakgala Rock with great views down the valley.  Up the valley towards Nuwara Eliya loomed a massive bank of white clouds.

It took the bus almost an hour to travel the 15 or so miles to Wellimada, a more than 2500 foot drop from Nuwara Eliya.  From there it was about 20 miles northeast to Badulla, mostly down a narrow and very beautiful green canyon with many twists and turns in the road.  Arriving in Badulla, at 2200 feet elevation, about 2, I found a hotel, had lunch, and then about 3:30 took a very slow bus north down a steep road with lots of roadwork in progress about four miles, descending about 250 feet, where I got off and walked about a mile, descending another 250 feet or so, on a path to Dunhinda Falls.  The path passed through scenic jungle with views of the river below and a smaller waterfall downriver from the main falls.  Dunhinda Falls drop about 200 feet down a massive rock face with jungle all around.  I spent about a half hour at a viewing platform in front of the falls and then walked back in the late afternoon.  There were quite a few macaque monkeys along the trail.

Back in town I visited a couple of temples, including one with a big white dagoba (stupa) said to hold some of Buddha's sweat, which is about the silliest relic I've ever heard of.  I wonder if there are Christian churches with Jesus' sweat in a vial or mosques with Mohammed's.

The next morning I visited St. Mark's Anglican Church in town.  The Sunday morning English language Holy Communion service was in progress, so I first looked around in the cemetery surrounding the church, with old tombstones and lots of small purple flowers growing among them.  I did peer in the open front doors during the service.  Not many were in attendance as the priest was giving a sermon.  I sat for a while outside with several other townspeople and listened to the service.  When it was over I went inside to look at the old plaques on the walls.  On one wall was a plaque saying that the church had been built in 1845 in memory of the Major Rogers, the big elephant hunter, killed by lightning in Haputale.  Ont the opposite wall was a plaque that was an obvious translation of the English one but in Sinhalese or Tamil.  I looked around and spoke a bit with the priest and some of the parishioners as the church was filling up for the Tamil language service.

From St. Mark's I walked again to the Kataragama Devale.  I had visited it the night before, but now in the light of day I could see the old murals on its walls depicting a perahera, or religious procession.

At 11:30 I left on a bus headed southeast to Monaragala, less than 40 miles away but a trip of more than two and a half hours.  The bus first headed uphill, rising about 1500 feet through forest and tea plantations before dropping down to the town of Passala at about 2800 feet.  From Passala a narrow winding road took us down through beautifully forested hills to Monaragala at only about 450 feet elevation.  I could feel the increase in temperature and humidity.  I had left the cool hills, although the area around Monaragala was still hilly, with a hill rising to about 4500 feet rising above the town.  The hill rocky, forested hill is also called Monaragala, which means Peacock Rock.

After finding a hotel and having a lunch I began a walk about 3:30 passing a rubber factory and climbing up the slope of Peacock Rock on the edge of town into an old rubber plantation, with the trees planted among giant boulders on the hillsides.  The trees are massively scarred by years of rubber tapping and may no longer be producing rubber, as there were no cups attached to them.  A few houses are along the way with friendly people in them.  I climbed only about 300 feet up the narrow road and then, hot and sweaty, sat for a while in a nice spot.  The whole area was very green and scenic, with boulders, rubber trees, and other jungle trees and plants.  I walked back and returned to town about 6, with birds chirping and frogs croaking as I descended.

The next morning about 10  I took a bus to the little village of Maligawila, less than 15 miles south, but an hour trip.  The scenery on the route was again beautiful, with rubber plantations, big jungle trees, forested hills, and green meadows.  From the village I walked on a trail past more big trees and many strangler figs a short distance to a 7th century limestone statue of Buddha, maybe 40 feet high, with a brick arch supporting his back.  The statue had been in pieces, was found in the 1950's, and restored in 1991.  The forest surrounding the statues is spectacular and I wandered all around for about two and a half hours.  Langur monkeys climbed among the tree branches and I spotted four monitor lizards on the ground as I walked around.  Three of them quickly scampered away, one up a tree.  The fourth was braver and let me follow him around for a while.

Nearby are ruins of a monastery and further away is another limestone statue of about the same size, this one atop a five level platform, a sort of ziggurat, maybe 50 feet high.  I climbed to the top, where it the statue is now under an ugly modern shelter.  It, too, was found in pieces and restored, with big chunks of cement filling in the gaps.  It is thought to be a statue of Avalokiteshvara or the Maitreya Buddha.  Macaques were all over the area and I spotted two more monitor lizards on the ground.  One, like the ones I has seen earlier, was about two feet long with its tail, while other one, which I followed around for a while, was about three feet long.

I walked back to the village through the beautiful forest and at 2 left on a bus heading back to Monaragala.  I got off halfway there and took another bus that took me just past the town of Butalls, 10 miles southwest of Monaragala, where I got off and walked a mile or so to Yudaganawa, where stands the base of a huge dagoba (stupa) more than a thousand feet in circumference.  The dagoba is said to be more than 2000 years old, though much restored over the centuries.  It marks the site where semi-legendary king Dutugemunu, Sri Lanka's foremost hero, defeated his brother in the 2nd century B.C. before going on to conquer the island. Right in front of the dagoba is a small Kandyan style shrine with interesting paintings on its walls and wooden ceiling, including a very skinny Ganesh and a Buddha seated beneath a cobra.

The shrine was very hot inside, so I was glad to get out and walk around the dagoba, where I spotted yet another monitor lizard and several big white mushrooms growing in the grass.  I walked back to the main road, stopping to look at another, much smaller, brick dagoba with ruins around it.  People were very friendly along the way.  I caught a bus to Butalla and then another to Monaragala, arriving about 6 after another pretty trip through green hills and forest.

The next morning I left on a 10:30 bus bound for Arugam Bay on Sri Lanka's east coast, a 40 mile journey that took about two hours.  Under a hot, sunny sky, the bus rounded Peacock Rock and headed east through the last of the hills and the ever present jungle.  Leaving hills, the bus passed through very gently rolling flatlands sloping down to the ocean, crossing the lowland jungle of Lahugala National Park, a beautiful dry forest.  At a glade with water beyond it we spotted two big elephants.  The driver stopped to give another tourist and me a chance to take photos.  Leaving the forest, the bus passed fallow rice paddies, flat and dry, and an army camp before reaching the coast at the town of Pottuvil, where it turned south, passing over the mouth of the lagoon, with a great view of the deep blue ocean to the east, and reached Arugam Bay just a couple of miles south of Pottuvil.

Arugam Bay is famous for its surf and must have fifty to a hundred hotels, big and small.  I checked into one and then walked to the beach, where it was hot in the early afternoon sun.  I had a small lunch and then sat under the shade of a tree on the beach, later talking to a guy who works for the local government when he stopped by.  There was a breeze off the ocean, but not much of one.  About 4:30 I finally got up and took a walk along the beach toward the southern headland (the northern headland is beyond the lagoon mouth and in Pottuvil).  Lots of fiberglass boats sat upon the beach further down, in front of tiny fishermen's grass shacks.  The boats seemed to be post-tsunami donations, with some of their donors (Rotary Belgium, British High Commission) painted on their sides.

Near the southern headland is a popular surfing spot, where about 50 people, both foreigners and a few locals, were surfing before maybe 30 spectators.  I walked further along the dunes of the headland until I could see the coast running to the south, and then turned back.  An almost full moon, two days short of full, had arisen.  The sky was mostly cloudy and the sun set with a last flourish through the clouds behind the trees to the east.  I walked back before dark and had an early dinner before heading back to my hotel.  My room temperature was 90 degrees when I went to bed.

I slept late the next morning, getting up after 8 after staying up relatively late for me the night before, 10:30, talking to another tourist.  After a late breakfast I read in my room till it was too hot and then went to an even hotter internet cafe and eventually lunch.  In mid afternoon I went to the beach and sat in the shade until about 5, when I started a walk north towards the northern headland, passing the sand bar blocked mouth of the lagoon and then turning back as an almost full moon rose.  Arugam Bay was a hot place for me after being in the hills and I sat on the beach, where it was coolest, until dark.  

June 1-6, 2014: Mahiyangana, Nuwara Eliya, and Horton Plains National Park

I finally left Kandy on the 1st, taking a 10:30 bus east to Mahiyangana, about 45 miles away.  While my bus was slowly pulling out of the jammed bus station in Kandy, I noticed bunches of bananas hanging alongside bunches of big purple grapes in several fruit stands.  Quite an odd combination.  Also, I noticed rambutan and mangosteen on sale, which I hadn't noticed before.  These are Indonesian fruits, brought to the island in colonial times by the Dutch.  Leaving Kandy's bus station, the bus headed back to the city center and went about two thirds to three quarters around the lake.  We got out of the city without too much traffic.

I took the bus to Mahiyangana, an almost three hour trip, mainly for the trip through the Knuckles Range en route.  From Kandy the bus crossed the Mahaveli Ganga and traveled north of the river, passing part of Victoria Reservoir behind Victoria Dam.  The Knuckles Range rises to the north, and I had great views of those green, rugged mountains as we rose to about 2800 feet elevation at Hunasgiriya, and even better views of the rocky cliffs of the Knuckles Range as we headed east down from the pass.  Eventually, I could see the plains below to the east.  At about 2200 feet elevation the bus started down a series of 18 numbered hairpin turns over four or five miles, descending more than a thousand feet, with ever closer views of the plains below as we descended.  At the bottom the air was noticeably hotter and more humid.  We descended further through the green, hilly countryside and again crossed the Mahaveli Ganga, which had turned north.  Mahiyangana, at about 400-500 feet elevation, is on the river's east bank.

I took a tuktuk to a small hotel on the banks of the river, where a wedding reception was in progress.  After I checked into my room, the brother of the bride's mother came up to me and invited me to share the buffet lunch.  The people were all very friendly.  There were no other guests at the hotel except for the wedding party and me.  Before eating lunch I wandered around a bit, taking a photo of the bride and groom, both in traditional dress.  I was invited over to a table outside, on the river bank, where several older men sat drinking arrack and Sprite or Coke.  I think two of them were the fathers of the bride and groom, but no one spoke particularly good English and they were a little drunk.  It was very hot sitting there.  There was no breeze at all.  One guy had on a tie, but no one else at the table did.  Few among the guests wore ties.

I went to get a plate of food and on the way to the buffet was asked to pose with the bride and groom.  They were beautifully dressed and I was in shorts, sandals, and a mostly clean but now very sweaty shirt.  The lunch was good, with ice cream and fruit for desert, but the air was very hot.  I envied the folks under fans.  Dancing broke out at one point, a sort of free form mass dance of young and old, and I, of course, was pulled into it., to much amusement.  I am sure they were laughing at me, not with me.  The dancing didn't last long and eventually I was able to sit along the river under a tree and watch what was going on, with several little kids and half drunk adults coming over to say hello and ask me where I was from.  The party began to break up between 3 and 4.  I retreated to my room, with a fan, just as the bride and groom were getting ready to leave in their decorated car.

About 5, under a dark sky, I walked about a half hour south of town to the big white Rajamaha Dagoba, marking the site where Buddha is supposed to have made his first visit to Sri Lanka.  (His second is supposed to have been to an island in the far north near Jaffna and his third to a place near modern day Colombo.  In reality it is unlikely Buddha ever visited Sri Lanka.)  The Mahaveli Ganga and, beyond, the escarpment I had come down on the way to Mahiyangana are to the west.  A big group of white clad devotees was sitting under a tree near the dagoba while an orange clad monk sitting in a chair recited.  Later, one of the group told me he was reciting in Pali, the ancient language of the Buddhist scriptures.  A few raindrops fell as I walked around the dagoba.  I got back to the hotel about 7, after dark.  My room was very hot at bedtime, 88 degrees.  But I opened the big windows, without screens (I slept under a mosquito net) and by morning the temperature in my room had plunged to 84 degrees.  I slept fine, though it took me a while to fall asleep.

Clouds hung over the mountains to the west the next morning when I got up after 7.  At 9 I left on a bus back to Kandy and again enjoyed the scenic trip, though it was much cloudier than the day before.  The view of the plains to the east from the top of the escarpment was much hazier than the day before.  It felt great to get up into the cool air of the hills after the heat of the lowlands.

Back in Kandy, I left at noon on a bus bound for Nuwara Eliya, about 45 miles away and even higher in the hills.  From Kandy the bus headed south along the Mahaveli Ganga to Gampoli and then began to climb southeast into the mountains.  Though the sky was cloudy, the green countryside was lovely, with tea and forests.  At about 3500 feet we passed a dramatic waterfall, Ramboda Falls, and began an even steeper climb, with lots of switchbacks.  The tea covered hillsides were beautiful.  We rose to about 6500 feet, and then came down to Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka's highest town at 6200 feet, after a two and a half hour trip from Kandy.  The air felt wonderfully cool, especially considering that the day before I had been sweltering in Mahiyangana. 

I found a hotel overlooking Victoria Gardens, a big formal garden in the center of town, and then looked around.  Nuwara Eliya, with only about 25,000 people, is considered the heart of the tea country.  The area was discovered by the British in 1819 and a road from Kandy finished ten years later.  The town became the center of the coffee and later the tea plantations, and the British also grew all sorts of vegetables not usually found in the tropics, like carrots and turnips and lettuce.  Some were on display along the road as we arrived, as were strawberries.  The area now is largely Tamil, the "Plantation Tamils" brought by the British to work the tea estates, but the area is still known as Sri Lanka's Little England, with quite a few old colonial buildings and rainy English weather.  The sky was cloudy when I arrived and stayed so all afternoon.

I walked around Victoria Park and along the very green golf course in the center of town.  I spent considerable time in two very nice hotels, the Grand Hotel and the Hill Club.  The former has a mock Tudor facade and wonderful public rooms inside, full of old photos and comfortable furniture.  The hotel has been considerably expanded from its colonial original, and it is all very nice.  There is a very nice lobby, two in fact, a ballroom, a court with a grand piano, a restaurant, a bar, and a billiards room with three tables.  I watched a couple of the staff playing billiards.  The Hill Club is a big stone building dating from the late 19th century, with a beautiful lawn in front.  A staff member gave me a tour and then I looked around the library, with a photo of Queen Elizabeth from 1954, when she toured Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, and several 18th century prints illustrating the differing fortunes of an industrious apprentice and an idle apprentice.  The Hill Club has a daily dinner where men are required to wear coats and ties or Sri Lanka national dress.

Walking around town, I also visited the old post office and passed by the club house for the golf course.  About 6 it was chilly enough for me to put on my windbreaker.  I went to sleep under blankets for the first time since Haputale.  My room was almost 20 degrees cooler than it had been the night before in Mahiyangana.

It was raining hard the next morning when I woke up about 7:30.  It continued to rain hard during breakfast at my hotel and only started to rain less heavily about 9.  Light rain fell the rest of the morning until it began to rain very hard again just before noon.  I spent much of the time looking out the hotel windows at people going by under umbrellas.  Early in the morning there was a colorful collection of them as girls in white skirts and blue sweaters headed to a nearby school.  The air got very cold.  I put on long pants, socks, and a fleece and was still a little cold.  I had hoped to go very early that morning to Horton Plains National Park, south of Nuwara Eliya, but could find no one to share expenses the evening before.  With the heavy rain, I was glad I hadn't gone.  I later read that the heavy rains had caused the deaths of more than 20 people in the lowlands south of Colombo.  At one spot eight inches of rain fell in one day.

I had lunch at the hotel and then about 2, with the rain now a light drizzle, finally headed out under my umbrella.  I walked to another wonderful old hotel, St. Andrew's, and looked around it and its gardens.  I walked back to the town center and then cut across the golf course on a little path and made my way back to the Grand Hotel.  The rain had stopped but clouds still hung along the tops of the hills surrounding town.  One of them, Mount Pidurutalagala (known as Mount Pedro to the British) is Sri Lanka's highest, at 8281 feet.  It is not particularly imposing, just the highest bump on a ridge.  I spent some time in the beautiful gardens of the Grand Hotel and then went inside, again watching staff playing billiards and later listening to a very good pianist at the grand piano.  The clientele at the hotel seemed predominately Chinese and Arab, with the Arab women all in black while their husbands were in shorts.  There seem to be lots of Chinese, from China itself as opposed to Singapore or even Hong Kong, all over Sri Lanka.  The cloudy sky was darkening even more as I recrossed the golf course back to the town center.

There was no rain the next morning, and even a few moments of sunshine.  I spent the day walking around town and up to hilltop on the edge of town.  I first headed to the 1889 club house of the golf club, right off the town's main street.  The sign said "Members Only," but I was welcomed and given an interesting tour of the building and grounds.  Besides a bar, restaurant, and lounge, there are a billiards room and a badminton court inside.  There are many wonderful photos and prints on the walls, including photos of club golf champions going back to 1910.  Wooden boards on the walls named all the champions since 1891 and there is a collection of old wooden golf clubs in a display case.

The guy who was showing me around took out back to spot where there are three or four tombstones from the 1830's and 1840's.  One lay over the grave of the Major Rogers, killed by lightning at Haputale in 1845, whose plaque I had seen at St. Paul's Church in Kandy.  I have read that he killed in excess of 1400 elephants before his own demise.   Perhaps the lightning bolt that killed him was a rather well aimed one by the elephant gods.  His gravestone is cracked in several places, supposedly the result of two more lightning bolts.  Elephants never forget.

I took the path that crosses the golf course towards the Hill Club and went inside after walking around the gardens.  In fact, I was invited in to look around.  I spent quite awhile inside, looking over the old bar, dining room, lounge, and other rooms, and then looking around upstairs, where I could peer into some of the old fashioned rooms with huge bathrooms.  I read a couple of newspapers in the lounge while sitting in a very comfortable chair.  From the Hill Club I walked to the nearby Grand Hotel and had lunch, with a little rain during lunch.

After lunch I walked south, stopping at several hotels in old buildings to look around.  There are quite a few wonderful old hotels here.  Nuwara Eliya is a big tourist draw for Sri Lankans on weekends and school holidays.  South of Victoria Park is the Racecourse, with a grassy track bordered by a white rail fence. Races now are infrequent, usually in April, but in colonial times they were big events.  Horses were grazing on the grass inside the track.

I visited a few more hotels west of the racecourse as it began to rain a bit.  The rain stopped and I headed up the road to Single Tree Hill, southwest of town.  As I started up I could see southeast down the valley to Hakgala Rock, a distinctive hill seven miles away, but soon clouds swooped in and obscured the view down the valley.  I continued up through tea bushes and soon was enveloped by the clouds.  I hoped it would again clear and walked up through the fog.  After climbing about 400 feet, I found a big flat rock among the tea bushes to sit on while I waited to see if the fog would lift.  It did briefly several times, opening up good views of the town, including the wide green racecourse area and a lake south of it.  The valley to the southeast was all fogged in, though.  I started heading up the road further and the views of town got better.  I reached the top of the hill, about 700 feet above town and no longer with just a single tree just before 5.  Thick, low clouds still obscured the view southeast, but the views of the town were great.  I enjoyed the walk down through the green tea bushes with the town below me.  The summit of Mount Pidurutalagala was covered in clouds.  I got back to my hotel just before dark.

The sun was out for most of the next morning, though the sky clouded over just before noon.  After breakfast at my hotel, I walked up to Holy Trinity Church, established in 1852, so said a sign, though the present church may date from 1899, the date marked on the outside of the church.  The exterior looks recently refurbished and the interior has some beautiful woodwork, a pipe organ, and lots of interesting plaques on the walls.  One plaque listed vicars since 1843.  The names were all European, mostly English, but a few Dutch or German, until the 1960's, and all Sri Lankan thereafter.  Another plaque explained that the person memorialized died in 1895 from an "abscess of the liver," which seems a little too much information.  Several commemorated deaths of soldiers in South Africa, Libya, and elsewhere.  The most poignant listed the names of four children, two boys and two girls, all from the same family and born from 1862 to 1873.  Two died before their first birthday, one before his second, and the fourth just before her seventh birthday.

The church was very well maintained and had several stained glass windows.  A small plaque stated that the three behind the altar commemorated the life and reign of Queen Victoria.  A large window in the transept commemorated the attendance of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh at Easter Sunday service in 1954 and displayed the royal coat of arms.

Outside the well maintained cemetery was full of British graves, most from the early 20th century, but many from the 19th century.  I think the oldest I saw was from the 1850's.  There are some recent Sri Lankan graves, too.  Yellow wildflowers grew all over the cemetery, which surrounded the church, with hundreds of headstones.  Many of the dead had made it to old age, which is somewhat unusual for these cemeteries. Quite a few reached their 60's or 70's, and I saw at least one who died at 80 or more, and one who died at 90.  One grave was shared by the husband and wife who ran St. Andrew's Hotel from 1933 to 1976.  Their last name was De Zilwa, an apparent Dutchification of a Portuguese name.  I had seen a picture of them at the hotel taken in 1966 at their 50th wedding anniversary.  The wife died just after they sold the hotel.  The husband moved to Australia to be with his children and died three year later.  His ashes were brought back to his wife's grave.

I had lunch and then took a bus only two or three miles east to the Pedro Tea Estate and visited the four or five story factory.  The tour was interesting and the building certainly smelled good.  We were treated to a cup of tea after the tour.  The factory had photos of the Duke of Edinburgh's visit to the tea estate in 1954. One photo shows him driving what a newspaper article reports is a Humber.  The article complements his driving along the narrow country roads.  It also commends his interest in the tea workers, asking what sort of pensions they will receive.

After the tour, two others who had been on the tour and I walked up through tea bushes to a waterfall, with great views on the way up, only about a 300 foot climb, of the surrounding tea fields, the factory, and the hills beyond under an increasingly cloudy sky.  As we got higher we had good views of town.  We also had a good view of a snake, a python I think, more than six feet long that quickly slithered right in front of us across the dirt road and into the tea bushes. In addition, we saw three long (six or eight inches) centipedes or millipedes.  The cloudy sky grew increasingly dark as we ascended, with fog swirling in to cover the mountaintops surrounding town, but it didn't rain.  We walked down the way we had come and took a tuktuk back to town about 4.

The next morning in the dark just after 5 I finally left in a van, with the two others I had met the afternoon before, for Horton Plains National Park.  It was raining and windy as we left, a bad sign.  Horton Plains is an undulating plateau at about 6500 to 7000 feet elevation about 20 miles south of Nuwara Eliya.  At its southern edge an escarpment plunges almost 3000 feet to the southern plains.  It took us over an hour to get to the entry gate.  The sky began to get light about 5:30, but fog obscured the views.  The narrow road made several switchbacks up to the grass covered, fog enshrouded plains.  At the entry gate we spent a few moments considering the cold, rainy weather before deciding to pay the $20 or so entry fee for each of us (Sri Lankans pay less than 50 cents) and brave the trail in the foul weather.

At about a quarter to 7, with the wind blowing and fog swirling around, we, and a few others, started down the trail that makes about a six mile circuit, heading to the escarpment and a viewpoint called World's End and back.  The first part of the trail is through undulating grass lands, with views of cloud forest on the top of ridges.  It seems the area is so wet that trees can get a good foothold only at the top of ridges, which are better drained that lower areas.  The grasslands were speckled with rhododendron bushes and dwarf trees, many with huge dark red blossoms.  Despite the wind and fog and early morning chill, I was warm enough in a thin shirt, fleece, and windbreaker.  My legs were a little cold under my thin trousers.

Soon the trail entered a spectacular cloud forest, which the trail wandered through for over a mile.  The stunted, moss covered trees were some protection from the wind, though fog swirled in and out of the forest and the heavily water eroded trail.  Ferns and dwarf bamboo and many other plants grew among the stunted trees.  I walked slowly and enjoyed seeing everything.  I saw a few birds, and heard a few more, but didn't see much other wildlife.  There are purple faced langurs, wild pigs, sambar deer, and even leopards in Horton Plains, but none were to be seen on that rainy morning.  There used to be elephants until about a century ago.  I did see a squirrel, with much thicker fur than normal, an adaptation, I suppose, to living in such a chilly place.

Nearing World's End, the cloud forest alternated with more open grassland and the trail passed by a viewpoint called Small World's End, with a plunge of about 1000 feet down the escarpment, but the fog obscured the views.  I could just barely make out the outline of a hillside with trees below.  The path to World's End was beautiful, with cloud forest and grasslands, and I enjoyed it despite the weather.

I got to World's End before 8:30, and, lo and behold, I could see down the escarpment to the plains below.   Immediately below is a the sloping valley of the stream coming down from Horton Plains called Behihul Oya ("oya" means "stream") with a few houses among the trees and grass.  Beyond, further south, I could see the plains and the Uda Walawe Reservoir, where I had seen elephants a month earlier with the escarpment as a backdrop until it was obscured by clouds later that morning.  I was surprised and thrilled to get to see the view.  Even in good weather, the view down the escarpment is usually obscured by fog by 10 in the morning.  When I started the hike on such a rainy day, I figured I would enjoy the hike but not be able to see the views south.  The higher peaks along the escarpment, including Sri Lanka's second and third highest mountains, were hidden by clouds and clouds hovered out over the plains.  The ridge on the other side of the beautiful little green valley of the Belihul Oya was mostly covered in clouds, but then they briefly blew away, revealing a gap in the ridge and views through the gap.

The clouds swirled back and forth, but the view south remained open.  After looking around for a while, I sat on the rocky ledge of the escarpment and ate half of the sandwich I had brought with me.  Clouds began to close in and soon the view was lost, after about a half hour.  I waited for a while to see if it would open up again, and then took the trail leading away from World's End into rolling grasslands.  It began to rain lightly, and with the strong wind in my face I got a little wet.  I broke out my umbrella to use as a shield.  The rain eventually diminished and then stopped as I continued through the pretty grasslands, with a view of the Belihul Oya up on the plateau, and then entered more cloud forest.

About 10, after an hour of slow walking from World's End, I reached the steep, muddy path through the cloud forest that leads down a little more than 100 feet to Baker's Falls.  The path was slippery, but with great views of the scenic falls through the trees.  Once I reached the rocky shore of the river just below the falls there were more great views of the falls and the river as it headed downstream.  Some wonderful ferns lined the river.

I enjoyed the views for a while and then walked back up to the main trail, easier than coming down.  A short distance along the main trail concrete stairs led to a viewing platform more or less eye level with the falls, with more fantastic views.  The falls cascade down through several levels across a wide outcrop of rock.

Back on the main trail I climbed up through the twisted roots and gnarly trees of more spectacular cloud forest.  Eventually, I climbed out of the cloud forest and was back in the undulating grasslands.  Here I again was pelted with rain and resorted to my umbrella, which helped, but my lower pants legs got fairly wet.  However, once the rain stopped, the fierce wind dried my clothes fairly rapidly.  The path back eventually ran along the Belihul Oya, with many gnarly rhododendron trees with blood red blossoms along its banks.  There were other wildflowers, too, including some very little delicate purple ones.

The last part of the trail left the stream, but there were still lots of rhododendrons along the path.  The rain started up again and I again pulled out my umbrella.  Just before the end several hundred noisy Sri Lankan teenagers, a school group, came along the path.  I got back to the visitor center just before noon, after a five hour hike.

The other two had arrived before me and we immediately drove back, with fog covering the plains for several miles as we drove at about 7000 feet elevation.  We descended and the fog lifted, revealing some beautiful forest.  We stopped at the train station at Pattipola, six or seven miles from the visitor center.  The other two wanted to take the train to Ella, but upon arriving were told the train would go only so far as Bandarawela (because of a landslide blocking the tracks further on) and that the train wouldn't arrive at Pattipola for another three hours.  They decided to continue to Nuwara Eliya.  On the way back I enjoyed seeing the green landscape that had been hidden by fog earlier that morning.  I didn't see much tea, but I did see lots of vegetable gardens.

We got back to Nuwara Eliya just after 1.  The hilltops surrounding the town were hidden by clinging clouds and the sky threatened rain.  I was dropped off at my hotel while the other two headed to the bus station.  At the hotel I ate the other half of my sandwich and some cookies and drank the rest of my water while it began to rain, quite heavily for a while.  My clothes were still a little damp, my hotel a little chilly, so when the rain stopped I headed into the town center and to an internet cafe.  I went to bed that night soon after 9 and slept for about ten hours.

May 24-31, 2014: Kandy

The sky was cloudy when I left Haputale at about 10:30 on the morning of the 24th on the train for Kandy, only 85 miles away but a six and a quarter hour journey.  I loved the train trip through the beautiful green hills.  The train threaded its way generally northwest, but with many twists and turns.  I again was able to get a window seat on the comfortable train.  My ticket to Kandy cost only 210 rupees, about $1.60.

From Haputale at 4700 feet we reached the summit of the train line, at about 6200 feet, after about an hour.  From there we slowly descended through forest and tea estates and reached Hatton, where I had got off the train six days before, about 2.  From Hatton the train wound its way around a mountain, with views across the valley below of the road I had taken to Avissawella four days earlier, and then headed north to Kandy, dropping in elevation from about 4200 feet at Hatton to only about 1600 at Kandy.  I noticed the change in temperature and humidity as we descended.  The train traveled along a river valley, the upper reaches of Mahaveli Ganga, for the last part of the trip, arriving in Kandy just before 5.

From the train station I walked to the town center, next to a lake ( a sign along the shore gives the elevation as 1680 feet) surrounded by beautiful green hills.  I checked out a hotel in the center near the Temple of the Tooth, but decided against it and walked halfway around the lake and up a steep street to another one with a wonderful view of the lake, town, and temple.  I was tired after the climb and enjoyed the view before walking down for dinner just before it got dark. 

I ate breakfast the next morning with the wonderful view of the lake, town and temple below me, but then moved to a lower and cheaper hotel before looking around the town.  Kandy, with its temple holding the prized relic of Buddha's tooth, is a place I had looked forward to visiting for decades, ever since I planned my first overland trip to Asia in 1979, and it lived up to my expectations.  It was the capital of the last independent Sri Lankan kingdom, almost inaccessible in the hills, though the Portuguese and the Dutch besieged it and even captured it several times, in 1594, 1611, 1629, 1638, and 1765, but each time the Kandyans burnt their city and retreated into the forests from where they harassed their attackers until they returned to the coast.  The British suffered the same fate in 1803, but then in 1815 the cruelty of the last Kandyan king caused the aristocracy to invite the British to take over. 

Over the course of the day I slowly walked around the lake, which has a circumference of only about two miles.  It was built by the last king of Kandy in 1810-1812 over what had been rice paddies along a little stream, which he had dammed to fill the lake.  Apparently, the king impaled several of his chieftains on the future bed of the lake after they objected to the project.

I started walking east on the lake's southern shore but didn't get far along the pathway around the lake before I walked onto the grounds of the Hotel Suisse, a large colonial era hotel right on the lake that served as the Southeast Asia Command Headquarters of Lord Mountbatten from 1943 to 1945.  I walked through the hotel, full of old photographs and old furniture, but still very nice.  I spent some time in the large lobby and looked into the ballroom, all decorated for a wedding lunch.  I also popped into the Billiards Room, with an old table and a wall hanging depicting dogs playing billiards, as distinguished from the more famous, at least to me, wall hanging of dogs playing poker.  I don't think that was hanging on the wall during Lord Mountbatten's time.

I ended up spending more than two hours at the hotel, first looking all around the old building and then watching the arrival of the newly married couple, the bride in elaborate traditional dress and the groom in a black western suit.  They were greeted by four dancers and two drummers dressed even more elaborately than the bride, in traditional Kandyan costumes.  They danced in front of the bride and groom and led them and their guests up to the ballroom.  Almost all the women were in traditional clothes, with some younger ones in western dresses, while all the men wore western suits.   As the bride and groom entered the ballroom the mother of one of them (I assume) offered them a glass of what looked like milk, from which each took a sip.  The dancers and drummers performed a bit more and then left, and I watched as the bride and groom cut their wedding cake and then fed pieces to several of the wedding guests.  A three piece combo in what appeared to be 1970's leisure suits played Simon and Garfunkel's El Condor Pasa.

I finally broke away from the wedding celebrations and continued my walk around the lake.  I soon noticed a very big water monitor lizard, maybe five feet long with its tail, in the lake right next to the shore, and very close to three ducks, who seemed unconcerned.  The lakeside trees had herons and other birds in them.  I wound around the eastern end of the lake and then walked up to a restaurant with very good and relatively inexpensive food in a dining room filled with old photos and newspaper pages.  The photos go back to the 19th century, with wonderful scenes of Kandy and Colombo, while the newspaper pages dated from Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 1953, plus several from 1962, one with a photo of Jacqueline Kennedy and Indira Gandhi in India.  The restaurant's name was History, the Restaurant, and I was the only one eating there.

After lunch I walked west along the north side of the lake to the enclosure of the Temple of the Tooth, right on the lake.  It costs 1000 rupees, almost $8, for foreigners to enter, so I put that off until the next day and walked around the enclosure a bit.  On the water is an interesting old building that once was the bathhouse of the Kandyan queens.  It juts out over the lake, but is not well taken care of.  I doubt anyone would like to bathe there now.  The building, however, looks very nice from across the lake, right in front of the Temple of the Tooth.  The former Kandyan royal palace used to surround the Temple of the Tooth and some buildings remain.  Just east of the temple enclosure is neoclassical two or three story building built by the British as their High Court.  It is now a Museum of World Buddhism, with various rooms filled with donations from Buddhist countries.  In fact, it is more like a promotional exhibit for each country rather than a museum, but many of the exhibits are very interesting.  I ended up spending about three and a half hours inside, partly because I watched a more than an hour long video on Buddhist sites in India, many of which I had visited.

It was about 6 when I left the museum.  I walked along the lake and by the Temple of the Tooth to Queen's Hotel, just west of the Temple of the Tooth grounds.  This old hotel dates from the 1860's, though with two wings built later, one just after 1900 and the other a little later.  It is a grand old hotel, though a little run down.  I sat in the spacious lobby and then checked out the old fashioned bar.  I found an internet cafe nearby and then walked back to my hotel, rounding the lake's western end, in the dark.  I again ate a very good rice and curry dinner in a little restaurant just across the street from my hotel.

After breakfast the next morning at that little restaurant, I walked around the western end of the lake to the Temple of the Tooth, with great views of the temple and other nearby buildings from across the lake in the morning sunshine.  I took my shoes off and put on long pants to enter, crossing the moat and passing through an archway and then a doorway and tunnel like corridor to reach what is called the Drummers' Courtyard, with the two story main shrine in the center.  The main shrine is covered with wall paintings and carved wood and had a cloth covering the doors.  The Tamil Tigers in 1998 ignited a truck bomb in front of the temple, destroying much of the front of the temple, but not much of the main shrine inside the Drummers' Courtyard.  All has been repaired, security is relatively tight, and vehicles are no longer allowed anywhere near the temple, which makes for a much nicer atmosphere.

A puja began at 9:30 or so.  The cloth was removed, revealing the silver doors of the main shrine.  Three drummers and an oboist, all in Kandyan costume, began to play in front of the shrine.  A procession of monks and attendants arrived and entered the silver doors and disappeared, heading upstairs.  I watched the drummers for a while and then headed upstairs myself, using the stairway to the left of the main shrine that takes you up to a long wooden room right in front of the second story of the main shrine.  This room was filled with people, with a long table covered with flowers in front of the main shrine.  Devotees were crowded in front of the table, some placing flowers on it and others pushing to get a look at the golden casket in the inner recesses of the shrine that contains the sacred tooth.  I pushed my way in and could see the elaborate stupa-like gold casket, maybe a foot or so high.

Other devotees were in a line that passed between the table and the door of the shrine for a closer look of the casket.  I waited for the line to get shorter and then walked by myself.  The attendants keep the line moving fairly fast.  The tooth was supposedly saved from Buddha's cremation and was brought to Sri Lanka in the 4th century A.D.  Over the centuries it has traveled all over the island as capitals have moved from place to place, ending up at Kandy in 1592.  Over time it became a symbol of the legitimacy of the monarchy.  It was captured by Indians in the 13th century, but then returned.  The Portuguese claimed to have captured the tooth in the early 16th century, taken it to Goa, pounded it to smithereens, and then burned it and dumped it into the sea.  The Sri Lankans claimed either that the tooth the Portuguese seized was a replica or that it magically reconstructed and flew back to Kandy.  In 1914, when the tooth was still regularly displayed, a westerner described it as unlike any human tooth and at least three inches long.  A 16th century Portuguese described it as a buffalo tooth.  But to the Buddhists it is Buddha's tooth and the most sacred relic on the island.  In front of the casket containing the tooth people were praying and leaving immense amounts of flowers.  For some reason the whole thing reminded me of the scene in the movie Sleeper where Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, before a large crowd, are expected to clone the last remaining vestige of the recently blown up Supreme Leader, his nose, which is lying on a table. 

The exposition of the tooth's golden casket went on for maybe an hour, with the drummers and oboist playing below all the time.  I walked by a second time to get a closer look not only of the casket but also of the paintings and other decoration on the walls of the shrine.  The crowd slowly thinned out and eventually the doors to the shrine were again closed, until the next puja at 6:30 in the evening. I walked down the stairs and into an octagonal shaped room in a tower at the front of the temple, with a good view out over the approach to the temple.  I looked around the lower floor of the main shrine again for a while, with lots of interesting details, and then walked into the big, three story modern building just east of the main shrine.  The ground floor of this building is full of Buddha statues.  (There are none, and very little Buddhist iconography, on the main shrine itself, where most of the designs are royal in nature.)  The upper two floors are full of historical items and exhibits, including clothes of the Kandyan kings and interesting photos, including some of the 1998 destruction.

After looking over all the stuff in that building, I returned to the main shrine for another look and then went out the north door of the Drummers' Courtyard to a grassy area with an open pavilion to the east.  This pavilion, with carved wooden pillars and a red tile roof, is called the Audience Hall.  It was built in 1784 and was where the Kandyan chiefs signed the document that handed Kandy over to the British.  I sat there for a while.  Eventually a big group of old Tamils showed up.  I had seen them before near the main shrine.  They all lined up for a photo in front of the Audience Hall.  I decided to photograph them, too, and their photographer told me there were 140 of them, all pensioners from Nuwara Eliya.  Two thirds to three fourths of them were women, all in saris, and I suppose they are former tea pluckers.  They were very friendly and curious, but shy.

Nearby is the relatively new Raja Tusker Museum, displaying in a glass case the stuffed remains of the large tusked male elephant named Raja who carried the casket with the tooth relic, or later a replica, in the magnificent annual procession (usually in August) around town for half a century, from 1937 to 1987.  He died in 1988 (there are photos of him lying dead) and a day of national mourning was proclaimed by Sri Lanka's president.  Also on display are the 1937 bill of sale for him and a 1925 document issued just after he was captured, when he was only four feet, five inches high.  I've read that to carry the tooth relic in the annual procession an elephant must be at least 12 feet high, with big curved tusks, and have seven body parts that touch the ground.  They include the four feet (well, of course), the trunk, the tail, and the penis, though I'm not sure even an elephant wants his penis dragging along the ground.  I noticed that while the four feet and trunk of Raja's stuffed remains touched the ground, neither his tail nor his penis did, although his tail came close.

Near the Raja Tusker Museum is an old, barn-like palace building, an interesting building, but with little to see inside.  I looked around and then returned to the main shrine for one last look before leaving.  It was quiet, with only 30 or so people sitting before the shrine on the second floor.

By the time I left it was after 2 and I headed to History, the Restaurant.  After lunch I walked up to the British Garrison Cemetery, established in 1817 and filled with interesting tombstones, a good proportion commemorating infant children. One tombstone served for three sisters, all dying before reaching a year of age.  Another tombstone commemorated the wife of a governor and another a guy killed by an elephant.  One with a broken pillar on it commemorated Sir John D'Oyly, the British agent instrumental in convincing the Kandyan chiefs to ask for British protection in 1815.  He died of cholera in 1824 at age 49.  Few others in the cemetery lived that long.  Most died before 30.

From the cemetery, east of the Tooth Temple, I walked again past the temple and along the lake to the Queen's Hotel.  I sat along the lake and in the lobby of the hotel before taking another short walk along the lake just before nightfall.  I again walked back along the lake to my hotel and dinner after dark.

I slept until past 8 the next morning and didn't make my way to the town center, about a 15 or 20 minute walk from my hotel, until around 10.  I spent some time in an internet cafe, had lunch, and then visited a museum in an old one story palace building.  The afternoon was cloudy and after sitting along the lake for a while I visited four little devales, or temples.  All four honor protector gods and display how Hinduism has been interwoven with Sri Lanka Buddhism.  Three are just to the east of the Temple of the Tooth.  One honors Pattini, a south Indian goddess.  Another honors Natha, a form of the Boddhisattva Avalokitesvara.  This small temple is Kandy's oldest building, dating from the 14th century.  The third honors Vishnu.  All are small and were quiet in the late afternoon.  There were good views of the Temple of the Tooth and the buildings around it from the Vishnu Devale, on a slight rise.

The fourth devale honors Kataragama and is on a nearby city street.  I arrived there just before the 6:30 puja, with a drummer banging away and lots of fruit plates being offered to the god by devotees.  This devale seems to be the most Hindu of the four, with several Brahmin priests in attendance.  It started to rain hard during the puja.  It was still raining after the puja finished, so I stayed, watching a mother and father and two little boys celebrating their own puja with a plate of burning substances added to periodically under the guidance of one of the priests, until the rain mostly subsided.

The next morning I walked along the lake and arrived at the 1843 Neo-Gothic Church of St. Paul soon after 9.  It is situated near the three devales close to the Temple of the Tooth.  Holy Communion was being celebrated in the big church, but before a small altar in the transept.  Only eleven people were in attendance.  I looked around and read the plaques on the walls.  One plaque honored a Major Thomas William Rogers, killed in 1845 at age 41 by a bolt of lightning at "Happootalle Pass Bungalow," presumably modern day Haputale.  The plaque depicted a palm tree being severed by a lightning blot, with a quote from the Book of Job about thunder.  Presumably they couldn't find an appropriate Biblical quote about lightning, so they settled on thunder.

From the church I walked to the chaotic bus stand and finally found the right bus to take me to the botanical gardens at Peradeniya, only three or four miles from Kandy.  I arrived there about 11, just after it had rained.  The gardens are enclosed by a bend of the Mahaveli Ganga, Sri Lanka's longest river, which flows generally northeast from Kandy and reaches the ocean near Trincomalee.  The area was established as a park for the Kandyan nobility in the 18th century.  The British turned it into a botanical garden in 1821.  I ended up spending five and a half hours, far more than I planned, wandering around inside.

The 150 acres of gardens are superb, full of interesting and beautiful trees, plants, and flowers.  And they are clean and quiet, unlike botanical gardens in India.  The sun came out soon after I arrived, though as the afternoon wore on the sky clouded up and threatened rain.  Among others, I saw coco du mer palms from the Seychelles, with huge double coconuts, which can weigh over 40 pounds, and many huge trees with magnificent arching branches and impressive root systems.  Some had buttress like roots almost as tall as me.  The Javanese fig trees, with branches extending horizontally very far, were particularly spectacular.

Near the center of the park are trees planted by foreign and local dignitaries, the oldest by the Prince of Wales in 1875.  Subsequent Princes of Wales, in 1901 and 1922, also planted trees, as did the future Czar of Russia (Nicholas II, the one executed in 1918) in 1891.  Most though are from the last few decades, both heads of state and government, but also some rather less notable folks.  The only Americans were the Apollo 12 astronauts.

Towards the northern end of the gardens many of the very high trees were filled with fruit bats, thousands of them.  The sky was dark with clouds by the time I saw them and they were mostly quiet, with only a few screeching or flying about.  A couple of the lanes were lined with rows of different kinds of palms, royal palms on one and Palmyra palms on another.  There was lots of bamboo, great big stands of it, and one area had several cannon ball trees, which I had never seen before.  Some of them were covered with large, round, heavy brown fruit, about the size of an 18th or 19th century cannon ball.  These trees also had spectacular red flowers.  An orchid house was full of magnificent orchids.  I've never seen so many varieties.  I think a sign said Sri Lanka has something like 250 species of orchid.

It never did rain and about 4:30 I took a bus back to Kandy through the heavy rush hour traffic.  The trip of three or four miles took over half an hour.  Kandy has only 112,000 people, so one of my guidebooks says, but it certainly has a lot of traffic jams, perhaps because it is so hilly.  I was hungry, having missed lunch, so headed to a restaurant as soon as I reached the city center.

The next morning I walked up from my hotel to a road about 200 feet above the lake and walked along that, with great views of the lake and city below.  On the hillside near the western end of the lake is a park with more views of the lake and a Japanese field artillery piece captured in Burma in World War II.  From the park I walked down to the train station in time for a 10:30 train heading to Colombo.  I ddin't want to take it to Colombo, but rather to a station in the lowlands so I could enjoy the mountain scenery on the way.  The train, with only a few old carriages, was already full, so I decided to wait for the next day.

I decided instead to visit three temples in the countryside southwest of Kandy.  I had difficulty finding the right bus to the one I wanted to start at and instead ended up going to the temple where I had planned to finish.  The bus dropped me off just before noon near the Gadaladeniya Devale, dating from the 14th century, a small Indian style temple built on a rock outcrop that was very hot on my bare feet in the noonday sun.  Inside the principle shrine and four smaller shrines at the cardinal points of a dagoba were Buddha statues and wall paintings.  An almost round depression in the rock had a pool of water filled with blooming lotuses.

From Gadaladeniya I walked for about an hour through pretty green countryside before reaching Lankatilake Devale, a big white temple on a hill, also situated on a rocky outcrop.  It is much larger than Gadaladeniya and is painted all white.  Inside is a small but very high chamber with a Buddha statue and wall paintings, all very interesting.  This temple also dates from the 14th century.  After looking around the chamber I sat outside, ate some cookies I had brought and enjoyed the views out over the green countryside.  The sky had been sunny, but now, at about 3, it had clouded up and it looked like it might rain.  Just before I left, a big group of white clad students, more than a hundred, showed up along with an orange clad monk who came over, sat beside me, and chatted.

From Lankatilake I headed to the third temple, first going down the rock cut steps on the side of the temple opposite to where I had entered.  These led down to a valley and I followed small, mostly deserted roads through more beautiful green country, with rice paddies, banana trees, and kingfishers, that took me over a small hill, through a village and finally to Embekke Devale after about 45 minutes.  People were very friendly along the way.  The village seemed to be predominantly Muslim, with a mosque, men and boys in skull caps and a little girl all in black carrying a black umbrella.  A few raindrops fell on the way.

The sky was dark with potential rain clouds by the time I got to Embekke Devale about 4.  The big group of students arrived about the time I did, so I sat for a while until they left and then looked around.  In front of the main shrine is a digge, or drummers' hall, with very interesting carved wooden posts dating from the 14th century.  They show dancers, wrestlers, two-headed eagles, and a lion and elephant fighting, among other scenes and designs.  Off to one side is an old rice barn, raised on stones above the ground to protect it from animals.

I started walking the half mile or so to the town of Embekke to get the bus back to Kandy and a guy gave me a ride.  I caught the bus just after 5 and enjoyed the lovely green scenery on the way back.  It took us about an hour to get to Kandy.  I was hungry and ate dinner as soon as I got back.

The next morning I made my way to the train station soon after 9.  The 10:30 train to Colombo was not yet at the platform.  It pulled in about 9:30 (it starts from Kandy) and I got a window seat on the side with the best views.  It filled up quickly and by the time we left at 10:30 there were people standing in the aisles.  The train headed west slowly, reaching the summit at Kadugannawa Pass, at 1700 feet only about 100 feet higher than Kandy's train station.  From the summit the train descended steeply, with spectacular views of the forest covered mountains to the south, including a flat topped mountain called Bible Rock, because it looked like a Bible lectern to the British, and a dramatic steep sided, forested mountain called Utuwankanda or Castle Rock.  We went through about ten tunnels on our way down to the lowlands.  The rail line was completed in 1867, blasted through solid rock in many places.

The air was hotter and more humid as we descended, with stops at every little station.  The aisles were soon full.  The countryside was still green and scenic, though less dramatic once we reached lower elevations.  After two hours I got off at the station in Polgahawela, at 300-400 feet elevation.  From there I took a bus north about seven miles to Kegalle and then another bus 25 miles east back to Kandy.  The trip by road is also very scenic and is another example of 19th century British engineering.  The British completed it in 1825, making Kandy relatively easily accessible for the first time.  During the time of the Kandy Kingdom's independence the kings had forbidden the construction of bridges or the widening of footpaths to make it difficult for the Portuguese, Dutch, and British to reach Kandy.  Heading up to the pass at Kadugannawa, the road hairpins for almost a thousand feet, with great views over the hills. 

I got back to Kandy about 3, had lunch and then a haircut at the Queen's Hotel.  At 5 I went to a traditional dance performance for tourists in a building on the lake.  The dancing and drumming were interesting.  At the end two guys walked on fire coals while occasionally licking little torches of fire they carried.

The next morning I walked up to the road above the lake and walked toward the eastern end of the lake, stopping at a bizarrely decorated, run down hotel called Helga's Folly.   I looked around the outside and was going to look around inside, but they charged three dollars to do so, which seemed pretty outrageous for a hotel.  So I continued on the road as it went down to the lake, and then walked along the lake's southern side.  Near the Hotel Suisse I spotted that five foot long water monitor lizard again and watched it for a while as it seemed to search for food in the grass at the lake's edge.  Eventually it got fairly close to me, maybe ten feet away, but then thought better of it and skedaddled down to the water and swam away to the bank further to the east.

I stopped in at a monastery along the lake shore which was filled with white clad devotees and orange clad monks.  Someone told me there was a conference on.  After my leisurely stroll along the lake I walked down to Kandy's chaotic bus stand and at 11:30 headed north to Aluvihara, a monastery with cave temples a bit more than 15 miles from Kandy, just outside of the town of Matale.  It took me an hour and a half to get there.  The roads were jammed with traffic, and it took us about half an hour just to get to the bridge over the Mahaveli Ganga, which is the Kandy city limits.  Heading further north, it still was slow, with lots of traffic and road work.  On the way we rose about 300 feet in elevation, to a pass at 1900 feet, and then descended to about 1200 feet at Matale and Aluvihara.

The cave temples were interesting, with brightly painted reclining Buddha statues and interesting wall paintings, some showing the rather awful punishments awaiting malefactors in Buddhist hell.  Another cave had sculpted figures suffering various gruesome tortures meted out by the last king of Kandy.  At the highest point in the jumble of big rocks containing the caves stands a small white stupa, from which there are great views of the green countryside and the mountains to the east, the Knuckles Range, so called because the peaks looked like knuckles to the British.  I enjoyed the view, but it was too hot at 2 in the afternoon.  I should have waited until late afternoon.  This monastery is more famous for being the place where the Tripitaka, the most important set of Theravada Buddhist scriptures, was first written down in the first century B.C., several centuries after Buddha's death.

The bus ride back to Kandy was much better, with much less traffic.  I had a late lunch/early dinner when I got back and then walked along the lake in the late afternoon until it got dark.  The lakeside is wonderfully cool at the end of the day and it is always scenic, hemmed in by green forested hills.  A big flock of egrets flew around the lake just before nightfall and then settled into trees for the night.