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.
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.
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