Kandy
Our first place on today's list was Kandy Palace and the Tooth Temple. During old times, the capital city of Sri Lanka was changed from time to time, mostly because of the Chola attacks from India. Each of these capitals has a seperate temple for the Tooth relic of Buddha which was brought to Sri Lanka by Hemamali, the princess of Kalinga and her husband Dhantha. Being the last capital of Old Sri Lanka, the tooth relic finally rests here.
There is an audio guide available in the ticket counter and the photography is allowed inside the temple too. After visiting the temple, museum and the palace, you can visit ' The World Buddhism Museum' too. I have never seen a vast museum dedicated to Buddhism like this. Each asian country has a separate hall in the museum to show how Buddhism came into their country and how it has grown now. The India, China and Korean halls look amazing with so much data. But photography is not allowed inside the museum.
 |
| Inside the Tooth Temple |
After seeing the palace, we came to the highway by walk and had our breakfast in Balaji Dosai. The dosai were not bad. And I had my first ever Ginger Beer here. I could definitely taste the ginger but I'm pretty sure that there was not even a hint of beer in it.
Then we started our journey towards Nuawara Eliya. Along the way I could see all the Hindu temples were celebrating Thai Poosam. Here Lord Murugan is the most popular god. On the way we could see a hill with a building and tower on its top. Our driver said that it was built recently and the view would be good from there. I still don't understand why did we took that detour.
The 'Ambuluwawa Multi Religious Center' was recently built by the President Rajapakse to honour all the religions. The place is almost deserted except from some couples who had taken sanctuary in some of the hidden corners. The view from the tower was great but I would advice you not to waste your precious time here if you are a foreigner travelling in Sri Lanka.
Nuwara Eliya
When we reached Nuwara Eliya around two or three in the afternoon I woke from my nap with a rumbling hungry stomach. The weather was good and we thought may be it was not such a bad idea to come here. We had our lunch at Sri Ambaal's.
Nuwara Eliya is a hill station with some old colonial buildings. It has some parks, a lake and some valley view points. The popular view point is called 'World's End'. When we finished our lunch it was already evening. While proceeding to the world's end, our driver said that since we have to do a trek inside the park to get to the point, the entry might be closed when we reach there. We had also planned to meet our vehicle owner who is a friend of Sathya's relative and lives nearby. When we called him, he told that he was not in home and we can meet him on the last day in Colombo. Now we were clueless about what to do next.
PS: If you want to know more about World's End, check this post.
On that time, we had realised that we had to do some serious planning or else we will loose some precious time wandering off. We hit the Lake Gregory park and while some of our friends were testing their kite flying skill, Sathya had a discussion with our driver. Soon we realised that our driver is a vivid fan of Obama. Whatever plan we propose, his answer was 'Yes! We can!!'. But thankfully Sathya took the responsibility of planning the trip by suo moto and laid out a plan.
While returning we stopped at Mackwoods Labookellie Tea Centre to buy some tea as souvenirs. The tea seemed costly but my parents said it tasted good when I returned back. At the tea cafe we got some free tea with our cakes probably because of where we come from.
Till then the day was treated as somewhat boring and wasted. But the day was not over!
We returned to Kandy at night, and stopped at a small hotel to have our dinner. I tried the Egg Kothu Parotta there and declared it as the national dish of Sri Lanka and decided to have it for dinner as long as I stay here. It was the best among the worst.
During that time the World T20 series was going on and we saw the first innings of India batting while having dinner at the hotel. It was around nine when we finished our dinner and we decided to hit KFC to watch the second innings. To pose as customers we decided to buy some ice cream while we were there. There was a small dining room adjacent to kitchen apart from the main dining area and we sat there and watched the match. The people working there were also watching the match with us and they were supporting Bangladesh. Whenever I went to buy some ice creams there was a wicket fall and my friends didn't mind to have more ice creams. We were rooting for India and the waiters for Bangladesh, it was almost like a Horse Race Club. When the match went to the final ball, we were all jumped from our seats to see whether Dhoni got the batsman and indeed he did! We were all shouting in joy and the employees there went little sad. Later we shook hands with them saying 'Good Game' and left the KFC.
That just made our day!
