We have grown quite fond of the Lake Lodge, so it was not easy to leave it. John will miss his balcony overlooking the rainforest.
We loved a lot of the quirky touches at the Lodge like the bicycle tires turned into holiday ornaments.
We will miss the warm and helpful staff
and our charming Swiss German host.
Dambula is mostly a central location for exploring Sri Lanka’s “Cultural Triangle”, but it has one important attraction of its own, the Dambula Caves. This is an important historical site for the development of Sri Lankan Buddhism and it contains some extraordinary Buddhist sculpture and painting. Not so extraordinary is the modern Golden Temple built at the base of the shrine.
The caves are actually just small indentations at the top of a two hundred foot granite outcropping. But before looking at the caves some history is naturally in order. According to ancient chroniclers, in the first century before the common era, King Valagambahu was exiled from the capital of Anuradhapura. He found refuge in the caves with the Buddhist monks who were living there. When he was finally restored to the throne fourteen years later, he established it as a pilgrimage shrine. Over the centuries various monarchs have adorned and re-adorned the caves. They are now not only centers for Buddhist piety but also treasures of Sri Lankan art.
There are five caves and each is decorated slightly differently. The most famous is Cave 2.
But the other caves have spectacular imagery as well.
We continued on to our next destination, the old royal capital of Kandy. Along the way we stopped at a word working shop. This was not scheduled, but I had thought that John might be interested in some of the famous wooden masks from this island. But we were hit with such a hard sales pitch that both of us felt that the last thing on earth we would like to do is buy anything here. We also stopped at a small spice store with a spice garden attached to it. Here we also had a “tour” but the man was fairly low-key and and the products quite reasonable priced. We bought some curry powder.
When we arrived in Kandy, a couple hours later, we were not instantly charmed. Like so many old cities, its narrow streets are choked with traffic and with the exhaust from cars. Ugly cheap modern architecture seems to blot out what remains from and older era, much of which has fallen into obvious disrepair. But we were charmed by our hotel which has the somewhat bizarre name of “The Secret Kandy."
It seems to be an old colonial-era house. The rooms are large and spacious.
We had lunch here and insisted that Tharindu join us. John wanted to go an antique store and to see the botanic gardens. We decided to pass on the “cultural show” — basically a folkloric dance show for tourists — that had been part of the scheduled tourists.
For some reason, we failed to take pictures at the antique store. We had a pleasant time here, and John bought a statue of the standing Buddha for our garden and a couple of decorative items for my new office. We were relatively charmed by the surprisingly large botanical gardens.
It is fundamentally an arboretum, and I saw some species here I have never seen before like the “Cannonball Tree,” Couroupita guianensis, a native of South America.
We walked across the suspension bridge
and looked down at the river, apparently one of the longest in Sri Lanka.
As sunset approached, Tharindu picked us up at the entrance to the gardens and we headed toward the Shrine of the Tooth Relic, the holiest Buddhist shrine in Sri Lanka. A few words on the Tooth Relic itself. Not so much about relics in general as that is a subject that is best left to historians and anthropologists, but about the idea of Buddha’s tooth as a relic. According to Buddhists, after the Buddha died he was cremated. Most of his remains were interred nearby in eight stupas, but his disciples kept four teeth and three pieces of bone. One of these teeth, a left canine, was given to the king of the Indian kingdom of Kalinga. It was kept safe in a temple there, but when Kalinga was invited the tooth was taken to Sri Lanka for safekeeping. The relic had further misadventures including been stolen by Indian invaders and subsequently returned, and an attempt by the Portuguese to destroy the tooth. Sri Lankan Buddhists claim that the King of Kandy hid the real tooth and allowed the Portuguese to destroy a fake. It is obviously not possible to independently verify the provenance of this tooth. What matters is that to Sri Lankans it embodies the very presence and nature of the Buddha himself and is therefore inexpressibly sacred.
Sri Dalada Maligawa is the Sinhalese name of the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. It was built by the last Sinhalese king of Kandy, Vira Parakrama Narendra Sinha, in the early 18th century. Tharindu, who is a very devout Buddhist, arranged for us to be at the Temple in the early evening when the reliquary containing the tooth would be briefly available to viewing. The tooth itself is seldom shown, but the tooth is contained within seven nested caskets, and this is what is displayed each morning and evening. The Temple was absolutely jammed with people.
Once inside it was hard to take pictures. Tharindu pointed out a fresco showing the relic being carried by an elephant through the streets of Kandy.
It is absolutely forbidden to take pictures of the reliquary when you are right in front of it. So Tharindu put John and I into a line to come close to the Tooth Relic while he used a camera to photograph it from a respectful distance. It was not easy to do in such limited light.
As night fell, we caught a glimpse of the old royal palace behind the Temple.
It has been an exhausting day. Time for bed!
