After seven hours on an seemingly endless train ride, we arrived in Kandy. Kandy used to be called Senkadagalapura and it was the last capital of the Sinhala kings. UNESCO granted it a heritage site status because of the cultural richness of the city. The Temple of the Tooth relic is also based in this city, but more about that later.
Arrival in Kandy
We didn’t want to make the same mistake as we made in Ella by not booking a hotel in advance, so we booked Kandy City Hotel. A great hotel in the middle of city centre with the most knowledgeable staff I have seen in Sri Lanka. We checked in at 4:30pm and we asked the receptionist what we could do in the city at that time. She told us to get into a taxi straight away so we could go to a Kandyan Dance show, which would start at 5pm. She told us to visit the Temple of the Tooth Relic afterwards because it would be really close and a puja (ritual) would take place around the time the Kandyan show would finish.
Kandyan Dance
We went to the Red Cross Hall for the Kandyan Dance show. The price was quite steep at 1000 LKR (6.50 euro), but the show was a lot of fun especially the ending was quite phenomenal. Traditionally these dances only took place at the Temple of the Tooth Relic, nowadays this custom is more widespread.
These are the different dance varieties that were performed on the night (thank you Red Cross for the leaflet with the full information):
- Pooya Dance
- Pantheru Dance – Pantheru is an instrument which resembles a tambourine (without the skin) and has small cymbals attached at intervals around its circumference. The gods were believed to use this instrument to celebrate victories in war, and Sinhala kings employed pantheru dancers to celebrate victories in the battlefield.
- Cobra Dance – To my disappointed, the dance does not actually contain a cobra, rather it lends its name from the way the dancers move.
- Mask Dance – This was my favourite! The mask was beautiful and the way the dancer was dancing was really captivating.
- Mayura Wannama – If I’m not mistaken the dancers danced around like peacocks during this performance.
- Raban Dance
- Ves Dance – This dance was my second favourite because of the elaborate clothing the dancers were wearing. The costume is considered sacred and is believed to belong to the deity Kohomba.
All these dance acts pale in comparison to the fire walking act. Normally, this act is quite boring; you see it performed when you go to the entertainment night of an all-inclusive hotel for example. Here, they took it one step further. First, we were all asked to move to the benches closer to the stage (because a lot of people had already walked out of the show after the last dance). The performance started quite mildly and I thought that it wouldn’t be any better than the all-inclusive entertainment night. The guy was “just” rubbing a torch along his arms and mouth.
Then they put some hot coals on the floor that the guys walked over. We have all seen that before right?
Up to this point it was nothing special, until gasoline was poured onto the coals and the fire shot up high. It went up hight enough for me to fear my hair would get singed because I was sitting on the first row. Then the guys walked over the blazing fire. Spectacular!
If I wouldn’t have seen the fire-walking act I would’ve thought the price was a bit steep for the dance show, but since it included the act the price was acceptable. The duration of the show was an hour and we walked to the Temple of the Tooth Relic afterwards.
Temple of the Tooth
The puja ritual would start in the temple at 6:30pm. The temple itself is located inside a big palace complex from which the Sinhalese kings used to rule. Unfortunately, due to our rush we didn’t get a good impression of it and after the ritual it was too dark to see anything. So I can only describe my impressions of the temple.
Before you enter the temple, you’ll be accosted by guides. They all seem to be very knowledgeable, and it would be nice to know more details about the temple, but we just didn’t want to spend the extra money. We thought we would be able to figure it all out inside; which wasn’t really true, but at least we tried. The price to enter the temple was 1000 LKR (6.50 EUR).
We headed to the area where a lot of people were standing with cameras because we assumed that that was the location where the ritual would take place (see, it’s easy without a guide).
Then the drumming started, this was the exact same drumming as the one we had just witnessed in the Kandyan Dance show. If you remember, I told you the Kandyan Dance and Music originated from the Temple of the Tooth ritual.
After waiting for around half an hour, surrounded by Buddhists playing on their mobile phones (such a strange sight) another Buddhist came out of a side door. He and some other guys were carrying a lot of items to the door and then they opened it, went in and closed it again.
That was it. We continued standing there, but people were leaving, so we figured we had just witnessed the ritual. We were so wrong, when we made our way upstairs we saw a huge queue. The you-only-live-once tourist that I am, I wanted to queue too. After an hour of waiting in the queue, without really knowing what we were queueing for, it was our turn and we walked by the container which holds Buddha’s tooth. That was it… To be honest, there’s no need to queue if you don’t fully understand the significance of this item. Also, no pictures so I have nothing to show for all this queueing.
The next hour we spent walking around the Temple and going into the different rooms. It really is an impressive place that’s worth visiting.
At 9pm we left the temple, and went back to the hotel to eat and sleep. It was a busy day; and the day after it would be even busier because we asked the hotel what to do with half a day in Kandy and they advised us to go to the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage. Afterwards we would take the bus to Colombo.
Bahiravokanda Vihara Buddha Statue
I’ll describe the day trip in a separate blog post, but after visiting the elephant orphanage I asked the driver to stop at the Bahiravokanda Vihara Buddha Statue. This is a massive Buddha statue (26m) which sits on top of a hill and overlooks the city. I didn’t know this until I reached the statue, but you can also climb up it. It’s a perfect way to get a good look over the city.
Conclusion
I only stayed in Kandy, which is the second biggest city of Sri Lanka, for one full day and one night. Half of that day was spent on a day trip. Needless to say, I didn’t see much of the city, but the sights that I did see were beautiful. I would like to come back to Sri Lanka and I’d like to make Kandy my base for visiting the cultural sights (Anuradhapura, Sigiriya, Polonnaruwa). During this week-long trip we didn’t have time for these cities. The next blog post with describe the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage and the last post about Sri Lanka will be dedicated to Colombo.
