Sri Lanka, days 1-3 : Temple time

Travel companion : Helen (ex flatmate, holiday buddy for 3 years, sometimes accused of being my sister)

Wildlife : 10 wild elephants on the road, herd of cows on roundabout, frog emerging from sink plug hole, bird stealing Helen’s breakfast, vicious monkeys trying to steal everything, cute little street dogs.

Day 1: Colombo to Kandy. We are in Sri Lanka! After a 10 hour flight we got straight in a taxi for the 3 hour drive north to Kandy, the first stop in the Cultural Triangle. First impressions – very green, lots of tea, tuktuks and monkeys!

We stayed in a little homestay / guesthouse with a lovely mum and dad that we immediately wanted to take with us for the rest of the trip. Not so much their teenage sons who were reluctantly helping out. No rest for the wicked so we dropped our backpacks and went to visit the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. This is the current home of a fragment of The Buddha’s tooth that was rescued from a fire. We stood in a queue for 10 minutes before asking ourselves what are we actually queueing for? You can’t actually see the tooth, only worship infront of a closed casket. The building itself is impressive with its gold roof, smell of jasmine offerings and monks playing drums and what sounded to me like snake charmer music.

Here we had our first encounter with two things that would prove very important. 1 – to enter a holy site you must cover your shoulders and knees, remove your shoes and hat and never ever turn your back on The Buddha. But only when taking a photo – so no selfies. It does not mean you have to back away slowly. 2 – to get your shoes back at the end a man might ask you for some small money. This does not mean you need to give him 1000 rupees as that’s the smallest note you have, the equivalent of £4.30 🤦🏻‍♀️

Day 2: Kandy to Polonnaruwa. The next day we hired a taxi (because we are grown ups now and that’s what people do in Sri Lanka) to take us around the Three Temples Loop outside of Kandy, visiting the Lankatilake (brick), Gadaladeniya (stone) and Embekka (wood) temples. The driver was lovely but kept calling me Ma’am.

Lankatilake temple is on a mountain top and appeared to be closed with only a cow grazing outside when an old monk materialised and unlocked the shrine inside the 1000 year old temple. Inside are both Hindu and Buddha images – this is a shared place of worship.

I was struck by how peaceful this place was. Although when we paid our entrance fee and looked at the information leaflet they gave us on the way out we realised we hadn’t see half the things mentioned but I couldn’t be bothered to take off my shoes again to go back in. We also paid double as we thought out donation inside was our entry – we should be due some good karma! I get the feeling we might never get the full picture of what’s going on here.

We stopped off a spice farm where a nice young guide showed us ginger, turmeric and curry plants which we enjoyed. I volunteered to try the ‘special balm’ not realising he was going to massage it vigorously into my forehead and pull my eyelids open. Cue tipping cockup #2 – a man outside the toilets holding a broom, who did not even ask us for money, received over £2 for his trouble 🤦🏻‍♀️ As we left we saw him showing his mate the note in glee.

We also stopped at Sigiriya (the famous big rock in all the Lanka photos) to climb neighbouring hill Pidurangula with it’s lower entrance fee. The book said it takes 20 mins, the entrance leaflet said 2 hours with warnings of an uncharted scramble at the top not for the unfit – we did it in the one hour that our driver told us to be back within although I chose to sit by the huge sleeping Buddha statue (making sure I didn’t turn my back) whilst Helen conquered the scramble to the top, aided by a few shoves from her fellow climbers in a few places! This seemed less impressive when an old woman sauntered past in flipflops.

We made it to Polonnaruwa a few hours later after spotting several elephants on the way right by the road – no need for a safari! Had an awkward moment calculating the tip for our driver who had ferried us around for 8 hours – surely he should get more than a toilet attendent!

Day 3: Polonnaruwa. The first few days are the Temples part of the trip so we know it will be hectic but we plan to sleep on the beach in a week’s time. We hired old rust buckets of bikes with no gears and set off to the ruins of the 11th century old capital. No need to download maps said Helen, it’s straight down the road. An hour later we were still biking up and down the same potholed road being overtaken by tuktuks and honked at by every single vehicle even in the opposite direction, looking for the museum to buy tickets which is conveniently located in a different place to the entrance to the ruins.

Unfortunately half the road was being dug up by women road workers in normal clothes and flipflops. We decided to walk not cycle around the roundabout with a herd of cows sitting in the middle.

It was worth it though, as we spent a couple of hours cycling from site to site admiring huge Buddha statues and temple ruins, sweating in our ‘suitable for religious sites’ clothing in the midday sun. Around each corner seemed an even larger relic. Also around each corner was another possible home of the Sacred Tooth Relic – that tooth got around!!

We didn’t enjoy so much trying to eat a huge orange that was more like a grapefruit whilst fending off vicious looking monkeys! Highlight was the four Buddha’s carved from the same granite.

And then it was back to Kandy on the local bus for 4 hours, crammed into a row of seats made for smaller people than us. The pimped up bus had a sound system blasting Sri Lankan pop music and flashing lights which made the journey more fun 😎 next stop, the train to Ella …