Kandy

The city
Kandy is located in middle of Sri Lanka in the hill country. If Colombo is known internationally as the capital then Kandy is known as the cultural capital of Sri Lanka. Kandy and the surrounding areas resisted European rules for over 300 years and remains to this day the cultural and spiritual centre of Sri Lanka. The city is located in the heart of a valley surrounded by hills with a gorgeous lake in centre. Unlike Colombo the people here are much more laid back and culturally diverse with a large population of Singalese, Tamils and Muslims. Perhaps the most important thing the city is known for is it culture, history, temples and as a gateway to the Cultural Triangle to the north of the city.

Temple of Tooth
Kandy's most famous temple is The Temple of Tooth. Housing Sri Lanka's most imporant Buddhist relic of the sacred tooth of the Buddha the Temple is considered sacred. The tooth was apparently rescued from the flames of the Buddha's funeral pyre in 543 BC. The Temple is visited throughout the day and night by pilgrims who come from across the country and the Buddhist world to visit one of the holiest temples in the religion. Sitting on the front balcony of the Oldie Empire hotel you could hear the chants and religious blessings as the pilgrims made their way along the long walkway which leads up to the temple. Every full moon Buddhist's celebrate the occasion with a puja where they go to the Temple, prayer and give offerings to the Temple. As the full moon technically starts in the early hours of the morning you can hear thousands of people making their way along to the Temple.

It's not until you make your way through 3 sets of security personnel that you realise that the Temple was targeted by the Tamil Tigers during the civil war. The Temple sustained massive damage from a bombing in 1998 which it has only just managed to recover from. Now its not surprise that the checkpoints are manned by heavily armed personnel who have no problem in searching you and your bags.

The Temple itself doesn't look anything special from the outside at first. But upon entering you enter a glistering chamber of lights leading in the main chamber. A mini building in the heart of the Temple houses the sacred Tooth Relic which you can't actually see as its only put on display a few days every decade! However, that doesn't stop pilgrims praying in front of the Temple in their masses and visiting the Buddhist statues and paintings towards the back of the Temple.

The thing which upset me was the cost of the visit. Unlike in other countries like Thailand EVERY temple, monument, park or almost any sights costs a small fortune in Sri Lanka. For example, locals pay 20 rupees to visit the temple, tourists pay 500 rupees! I don't have a problem with tourists paying more as we have more money but I find the sheer difference in price insulting. Being forced to pay this much to visit a Temple, especially if you are Buddhist is wrong.


Kandy dance

Drinking, Sri Lankan late nights and American girl
On the first night in Kandy I met a loud and friendly Kiwi guy called Dwain who had been working out in the Maldives for the past year or so. Venturing out to the apptly named 'The Pub' (no joking that is the name!) we proceeded to pour various local concocsions down before heading the Pub Royale where we met a tall young American girl Alissa who had befriended by a rather annoying Sri Lankan with 'ulterior motives'. The pub seems to have an ability to attract the 'wrong' types of Sri Lankans as many drink in the bar aiming to either a) sleep with a 'cheap' (being their mindset not mine) foreign women or b) get you to pay copious amounts of money for something like a tour. Our time in the pub ended with Dwain standing up to the guy so that eventually after rather a while he got the picture that he basically needed to be somewhere else. What was really amusing was whilst we were arguing with this guy a brawl was breaking out elsewhere in the bar between a couple of Sri Lankan's and two waiters! So there I was in the bar with two brawls simultaneously going on wondering what the hell was going on!

One of the problems with Sri Lanka is that everything shuts down stupidly early. As soon as the sun goes down and night sets in the locals seem to think 'right we may as well go to bed now' at 6 in the evening! What this means is that almost every pub seems to want to shut its doors at
10pm, yes 10pm with many hotels locking out any poor unfortunate bugger who happened to be out trying to have fun!

Sure that the night was still young we jumped in a tuk-tuk and tried to find a place, any place, in the mountains where we could continue to drink. Alas where we went I do not know as it was someway up in the hills and I lost track either due to the number of turns we had taken or the amount of alcohol I had had to drink. Eventually we found this small bar on the top of a hotel with views over the valley and surrounding hills. Run by a young Chinese guy we ended up spending the night chatting to him and his German friend . Eventually the bar shut and the Chinese man offered to give us a lift back to our hotel in the small car which meant Alissa (who is over 6 ft 4) ended up sitting in a ball on our laps. As we feared the guesthouse decided to shut the poor girls gate so we ended up shouting and hurling stones at the window in a vain attempt to wake the owner up. After 5 minute the realisation this wasn't going to work dawned on us so I offered Alissa the spare bed in my room as I had a twin share, fortunate indeed as she would have been homeless otherwise. Needless to say DO NOT come to Sri Lanka if you want a large night out as they don't do late nights! EVER!!!

Cultural Triangle
What not a lot of people may know about Sri Lanka is that it has a long, interesting and prosperous history stretching back thousands of years. The heart of the country used to be the plains north of the hill country, known now as the 'cultural triangle' which sprawned a number of huge cities and holy sights. Two of the capitals are considered to have been two of the largest and most important cities of their ages - Anuradhapura for nearly a 1000 years (300 BC - 700 AD) and Polonnaruwa (1000 AD - 1300 AD). Aside from being rather difficult cities to even pronounce they were going to be hard to visit but well worth the effort.