2017 Sri Lanka – Kandy
24th January 2017
The hotel had arranged a taxi to take us on the three-hour journey to Kandy. Our driver was terrible but there was nothing we could do but leave it to fate. He kept overtaking blindly and then when he realised he wouldn’t make it he would fall back into the space he just left. There was a multitude of dead people who will tell you that sometimes that space closes up so there is no way of retreating. At one point he realised that we had gone past a place we wanted to visit so he stopped and did a three-point turn on the main road just in front of a bend. Had any vehicle been coming around the bend at the same time you wouldn’t be reading this. A friend of ours in Croatia was killed in exactly that way. The irony was that Federika wouldn’t let me hire a car and drive despite my 45-year unblemished driving record. She insisted we would be safer with a local driver who knew the roads.
When we finally found the hotel it was more of a homestay. They had described the accommodation as a “three-bedroom apartment” but left out the word “shared” although it wasn’t deliberate. They had filled out the booking.com forms wrongly which I knew from experience was not easy. There was no way we were going to share an apartment with strangers so we came to an agreement where we would pay for two of the four nights and they helped us find another hotel. Most of Kandy was booked up so we had to book an expensive hotel but after such an awful journey and the unpleasant experience at the homestay, we felt we deserved some luxury.
27th January 2017
The expensive hotel turned out to be the most overpriced I had ever known despite them giving us a free upgrade. It was just a bog standard three-star room at five-star prices. Fortunately, we had only booked three nights so we could go somewhere else for the last couple of days. We turned out the lights to go to sleep and there must have been 100 dogs outside competing in some kind of canine song contest but we were so tired I can’t say it kept us awake. At 4:45 a.m. I was woken by what sounded like a foghorn playing through a powerful PA system. I was dropping off back to sleep when there were two minor fog horns and then at 5 am the heavily amplified praying started and kept me awake for nearly an hour.
Next morning we started at the Kandy market and then walked along in the rain to the Temple of the Tooth. It was quite a large area controlled by guards making sure people wore acceptable clothing. My knees were showing which apparently was disrespectful but luckily I had just bought a pair of linen trousers so I did a quick change in the street outside which wasn’t easy to do while holding an umbrella. Near the entrance to the temple, while still in the open, we had to take our shoes off despite the fact it was raining quite hard. It was a nice feeling walking bare feet in the rain but it was a little slippery in places and my feet got cold after a while.
Inside the Temple of the Tooth, it was surprising that in such a major tourist attraction there was no information in English. The main exhibit was where the Buddha’s tooth was kept. This was a massive thing for Buddhists and it was said that whoever possessed the tooth was the ruler of the country. I didn’t really understand that as without DNA what was to stop a wannabe king from saying that the Kandy tooth was false and he owned the real Buddha’s tooth?
We stood alongside other tourists in front of an ornate structure and looked at each other wondering if that was where the tooth was stored. It wasn’t, and nobody seemed to know what was going on. We went upstairs and although there was still no official sign, someone assured us that was where the tooth was. We had to take their word for it because the actual tooth was not on show. All we could see was lots of people sitting around praying and offering flowers and incense.
There were lots of smaller exhibits and a very interesting Museum of Buddhism showing how Buddhism had spread throughout the world. There were eight stages from the Buddha’s birth to his death and it was in the final stage, just before he died, that the Buddha specifically forbade the making of statues in his name. He instructed people to follow his teachings without worshipping him as a God. That made sense to me but it seemed strange that you couldn’t walk a metre in Sri Lanka without coming across a statue of a Buddha and in the temples there were dozens of them.
The next day poured with rain so we spent most of our time in the shops until 5 pm when we went to see a Sri Lankan Dancing show. It was a large concert hall and quite tatty considering it was one of the country’s main tourist attractions. We were lucky to have front-row seats where we found a booklet explaining the meaning behind each dance. Years ago we went to London to see a musical called Bombay Dreams and I loved the Indian dancing which was so exciting and rhythmic. I wasn’t so keen on this classical style of dancing which was subdued and mainly involved the women making elegant movements with their hands. 
Federika liked the dancing but said she was disappointed with the costumes which I had hardly noticed. The men’s dancing was more interesting but was mainly acrobatics and although very good, I couldn’t see what it had to do with dancing. The dancers were accompanied by several drummers who impressed me, especially when they took centre stage and began soloing on the many different types of drums.
To finish the show there was a demonstration of firewalking which was most impressive although I do think they should have invited people from the audience to have a go.
The next day we were happy to leave the expensive hotel and checked in at another for two nights. It was irritating that the new hotel was immeasurably better and yet cheaper and better located as we could walk to town from there. It was a standard corporate hotel which Federika was not so keen on although she had to admit that it was well run which was the reason I liked staying in those kinds of hotels. When we entered our room I went to open the window when a monkey walked across our balcony and I noticed a sign saying not to open it because the monkeys would get in.
The lake in Kandy had an interesting story. The last king of Sri Lanka Vikrama Rajasinha lived in Kandy and was known to be a nasty piece of work as well as being wildly extravagant. There was a lot of unrest amongst his people who were starving and knowing he had to do something about it he had a brainwave. He decided what his people needed was not food or housing, but a giant ornamental lake. While he was pumping all the country’s money into the lake his people were fighting amongst themselves which made it easy for the British to pop along and take over. They exiled the king and his family to India and instead of investing in fancy ponds and lavish parties the British built roads, railways, schools, tea plantations and most important of all… cricket pitches. So there you have a nice little moral dilemma. Is it better for a country to be free but ruled by a nutjob who steals all the money or by a foreign power that steals only half of the money and spends the other half investing in the country’s future?
On our last day, we hired a taxi to take us to the botanical garden. They gave us a free map that turned out to bear no relationship to the place we were visiting which covered a large area with lots of paths. In one place the map said, “You could be here.” At another location, it said, “Or you might be here.” Over to the west, it said “This is not the orchid house.” Ok, it didn’t say exactly that but it wasn’t far off. It was still very enjoyable and we managed to see most of it before the rain started.
Next was a tea factory. We were greeted at the door by a very friendly woman who gave us a tour. As soon as we entered the factory there was a wonderfully overpowering smell of tea which was kept in the dozens of open boxes around the storeroom. She went through each stage of producing tea and I was surprised that the same tea leaves produced so many different blends of tea depending on how they were processed. They started by putting leaves from the tea plant into a machine to crush them and what was produced in the first run produced the best tea. What remained was put through the machine again and again and each time the quality of the tea was reduced. In the end, they were left with a lot of dust on the floor which they swept up and sold to supermarkets. I liked Earl Grey tea and silly me, I thought there was a special Earl Grey plant but I discovered that the taste came from the oil of bergamot that they added to it. Many of the other fancy teas were produced by either adding ingredients or doing things to the leaves before going through the grinder. At the end of the tour, there was a shop where they gave us a free cup of tea but they refused to give us milk with it so it was so strong I found it unpalatable. There was a large selection of very expensive tea on sale with fancy packaging and we bought a few small packets for presents.
Finally, our driver suggested we visit a jewellery factory. A man met us at the door with the sign “Our prices are exorbitant” practically tattooed on his forehead. He took us to a room and showed us an interesting video on how gemstones were mined. The sign on the man’s forehead changed to “Get your credit card out” and he showed us his workers making the jewellery. He sat us down and produced a tray of gems asking which ones we wanted. Federika showed some interest in a pair of earrings and after avoiding the price for as long as possible he quoted £140. Federika got quite angry with him which was unusual for her so he immediately dropped the price to £80 which was still around double what it would cost in England. I was feeling awkward as he had spent an hour working on us so I felt an obligation to buy something but Federika stayed strong and told him politely where to stick his gems.
That evening we did a lot of shopping and it was ironic that having done so much walking and climbing steps, Federika injured her leg quite badly while trying on a pair of trousers. She had no idea how it happened and the first she knew of it was when we were walking out of the shop and there was a sharp pain near her hip. She must have pulled a muscle but fortunately, we had finished shopping by then and there was no more walking for the rest of that day.
2017 Sri Lanka
