Kandy

                     .........  .KANDY............

KANDY 

Kandy, once the country’s capital more than two centuries ago, is Sri Lanka’s biggest city after coastal Colombo.

The city lies roughly around the centre of the island and teeters just within the boundaries of Sri Lanka’s lush hill country, meaning this vibrant and historical hotspot is surrounded by some really quite gorgeous green mountains.

We arrived at the busy and heavily air polluted bus station in the late morning. It felt far busier than Colombo, with more traffic filling the streets, but, in turn, the drivers appeared to act much more reepectably than those we’d grown used too in India. Beeping is kept to a minimum, general road courtesy is practiced, and road traffic laws are followed too – did you know that cars actually stop at traffic lights here? They have pedestrian crossings too, can you believe it?

Kandy's calm lake.

As we lugged ourselves through Kandy in search of our hotel I immediately noticed, to my absolute delight, that almost every road is festooned with bakeries. This, for a man with an uncontrollable sweet tooth, sent my soul soaring. Every few steps I’d find myself, like a small child, eagerly pressing my face up against the shop windows, eyes glistening and mouth feverishly salivating. Pastries, biscuits and cakes fill the glass guarded shelves; their sugar coated twinkle and cream filled enticement guarenteed that much of my time here would be spent shamelessly stuffing myself with tantalizing treats.

After some difficulty in finding the exact building we eventually stumbled across our well disguised hotel, the Burmese Rest. I suppose hotel is probably the wrong word for this place, it’s really more of a rest house if anything. Run by monks and filled with tortoises, this quiet and slowly crumbling rest house served as a former pilgrims guest house, meaning the facilities are very, very basic. There’s no WiFi and the bathroom is shared amongst the other rooms in the guest house. For the price, however, you can’t complain; we paid bang on 1000 Sri rupees for a room between the three of us. Despite all three of us looking to squeeze into a double room in a bid to save a little dough the head monk, in the true spirit of Buddhist teachings, kindly allowed us to stay for no extra charge on the room, which I thought was pretty swell.

As mentioned before, we are on an uncomfortably tight schedule over here so we are on a militant mission to cram in as much stuff as we can in as little time as possible. With that in mind we shot straight out into Kandy after dumping our bags at our guest house and headed for the intriguingly named Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, which ostensibly houses an actual tooth from the Buddha’s own gob.

The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic.

There was a slight hold up on entry to the temple. Etna, wearing shorts, had brought a shawl to effectively wear as a skirt but the damn thing wouldn’t stay on. This was an issue as women must dress as modestly as possible when visiting places of even the most tenuous religious significance. As Gary and I marched through the male security check without any problems Etna, trying her luck, was refused entry. Not all was lost, however, as she heroically dashed off to a nearby stall and bought a new pair of trousers so she could get in. She received some endearing looks from the ladies at security as a result.

We paid the 1000 Sri rupees entry fee and followed the huge volume of human traffic funnelling into the golden roofed and highly decorated temple clasping baskets of colourful flowers.

As we worked our way through the entrance and up the stairs we found ourselves in a busy queue with everyone eagerly awaiting their chance to catch a glimpse of the Sacred Tooth Relic; the excitement amongst those in the room was palpable. We shuffled along the narrow passageway, taking regular elbows to the face and torso and repeated shoves in the back as people madly scrambled to see the Buddha’s tooth. There was a build up of people right in front of the shrine that houses the tooth; people chanted and threw flowers into it as they passed. I was excited to see it myself; a tooth from the Buddha, what on earth could it look like? Would it be a molar or an incisor? Would it have a filling in it even? What was the quality of dental care like back in 500 BC? To my dismay, however, the tooth is actually sealed away in a golden box, so you can’t see it anyway.

Visitors lighting tea lights in some kind of religious act.

I suppose it’ll be up to my imagination to settle that one for me. I don’t what I was expecting to see to be honest; some sort of enormous dragon shaped tooth perhaps? No, of course not.

From what I could gather the tooth relic came about following the Buddha’s death and found itself rallied around various parts of India before being taken to Sri Lanka and protected there.