January 2020
"In the center of town, three wheelers careen around slippery corners, raising a soft spray that threatens the silk saris worn by local women. Here's a city that looks good even when it's raining."
Think they must have been sponsored by the local tourist board. Personally found it to be a tad cramped and manic. Our accommodation for the three days we were there was about three kilometers out of town in a peaceful spot by the river so picked up a tuk tuk to take us there. En-route we negotiated a tour of the highlights around Kandy with the tuk tuk driver for the next day. At $30 a very good rate as we were out and about for about 10 hours.
The tour took us past some beautiful scenery and some old railway equipment before heading up to the Lankatilake Temple - aka Walking Buddha Temple.
From there it was another visit to a Tea Factory - different enough from the one we saw a few days earlier. Plus it was free, allowed photos and they gave us tea and cake at the end!
Tea leaves are first spread out over huge racks and warm air from furnaces is blown through the leaves to dry them.
Then feed into big 100+ year old rotatey machines to gently twist the leaves.
Feed onto conveyor belts for reasons I can't remember.
Twigs etc are then lifted out and stick to rollers via an electro static charge being applied to rollers - more 100+ year old gear.
The last bit of kit (very new) is apparently used on only for select leaves as it uses lasers to detect to color of the falling leaves and separate them out accordingly.
Paid our respects to those who died defending Sri Lanka in WWII.
From the top of the Buddha nice views out over Kandy could be seen including this rather impressive looking building complete with a fortified wall. Later found out it used to be a high security prison and is in the early stages of being turned into a tourist shopping center.
As part of the tour we offered to be taken to see Gem carving, a Spice garden and a Woodworking center (aka shops). Declined the first but checked out the Spice garden but focus was there use in in Ayurvedic medicine rather than cooking. The woodworking center was actually quite interesting and a mixture of some exquisite large pieces and lots of small bits of tat. Most interesting part of the woodworking center was the creation of dye using "rainbow wood". Take some shavings from a small piece of this wood and added hot water to it – red dye. Add iron filings you get black dye. Add squeeze of fresh lime yellow dye. Add chalk you got purple dye. Didn't record it myself but found this clip that demonstrates it nicely.
The third Buddha visit of the day was to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic which contains Sri Lankas most holy relic - a tooth of Buddha. Can't actually see the tooth as it's stored in a casket, which is inside another casket, which in turn is inside another casket, which in turn is inside another casket, which in turn is inside another casket, which in turn is inside another casket, which is locked inside a shrine.
The next day we had a quick look at the Kandy Garrison Cemetery which is full of graves from the colonial times - times here were obviously v tough for the colonials as a few died of old age but most died in childhood or before the age of 40.
The local grounds keeper will show you around and tell stories about how various people died. i.e. Crush to death by elephant, killed by a cricket ball or impaled by a stake through the testicles, though he did admit these are a bit on the apocryphal side.
Heading back from the graveyard we passed the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic where a ceremony was in the process of starting. Nice to see that the costumes demonstrated at the dance weren't purely put on for the tourists and are still part of Sri Lankan life.
The rest of the day was spent chilling by the pool.
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