Kandy, Sigiriya and Dambulla

A View from My Room in Kandy

Arriving in Colombo, Sri Lanka after a fairly easy but incredibly frigid – I mean Arctic - flight from Kuala Lumpur and walking outside of the airport felt like standing too close to a fire.  The sun and heat just hit you and almost took your breath away.  After acclimating slightly, we embarked on a taxi ride that probably ended up taking the same amount of time as the flight – we were hopelessly lost and seven phone calls by the driver to our hotel didn’t seem to help.  FINALLY we made it to the hotel which was very nice.  Colombo on the other hand . . . well, it’s just a really big and noisy city.

One night and a lovely three-hour train ride later found us in Kandy – another city with too many tuk-tuks and traffic, but with lovely rain forests, parks and wildlife right outside of the city.  We have managed to find some of the beauty walking in a rain forest park where an owl flew over our heads, wild pigs with babies crossed our path and strange bird sounds surrounded us.  We LOVED it!  We’ve been to a tea factory (fascinating since I drink the stuff every day), an ayurvedic spice farm and TA-DA . . . The Temple of the Tooth which houses a tooth that Buddha lost and is kept in a silver pagoda looking thing inside a room, inside an ante-room which is opened twice a day so the public can glance at the pagoda thing – not the tooth which can only be viewed from a distance sometime every August!  We met some nice people while waiting for our turn to walk past the tooth room and felt like we had been part of something unique and special afterwards.  This place is considered one of the holiest Buddhist places and is really something. 

Two Photos from Utawattakele Forest Near Kandy

Just returned from an overnight trip to Dambulla (Buddhist Cave Temple) and Sigiriya or Lion Rock and we all wished we could have spent more time in Sigiriya.  There is a lot of wildlife (including, we are told, wild elephants) and unspoiled jungle in the area.  The area around the rock is great for cycling and the climb up the 1200 steps to the top of the rock was well worth it despite the warnings of dangerous wasps (which we did not see).  There are many stories about the ruins, frescoes and carvings ranging from it being a temple to a hideout for a runaway king and his concubines.  I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions. 

Tomorrow off to Ella and onward from there.  More from Sri Lanka soon.

Roadside Stand on Drive to Dambulla

Dambulla

One of the Caves in Dambulla

Another Dambulla Cave



Self-Explanatory



Sigiriya Rock



Lion's Foot Carving at Sigiriya Rock
 



One of the Frescoes in a Cave on Sigiriya Rock



A View of the Valley and the Knuckles Range From the Top