Kandy, Srilanka

23 Jun
En route to Kandy, we visited two famous places in Srilanka, the Sigiriya Rock and Dambulla Cave Temple. It took around 4 hours from Colombo to reach these places, however, because we needed to exchange money, we took a detour and reached Sigiriya very late at around 2pm. We had lunch first at Sigiriya Hotel and it took 45 minutes just to get the food served.

We reached the gate of Sigiriya rock at around 3.30pm and it was very hot. It is a 2-hour-climb to reach the top of the rock, hence we decided to forgo it. Sigiriya rock was a palace of Srilankan king before. The view surrounding the rock is nice though, we took several photos and moved on to Dambulla Cave Temple.

River surrounding Sigiriya Rock

Sigiriya Rock

Dambulla Cave is around half an hour from Sigiriya, there is some stairs to climb there. We need to wear covered clothes and take off our footwear when entering the temple. The view along the way up is awesome. The temple is inside a cave, there are lots of old nice paintings on the cave's wall.

Golden Buddha Statue in front of Dambulla Cave Temple

View on the way to Dambulla Cave

Sunset at Dambulla

Inside the Cave

Outside

We headed to Kandy right after Dambulla, it took us 1 hour plus to reach Kandy. Dinner was at Flower Song Chinese Restaurant. We tried Srilankan Chinese food, it is great. I feel the spices are a bit different from usual Chinese food. We spent around LKR7000 for 7 of us. We stayed at Thilanka Hotel for the night. The hotel is good and clean, it is located on top of a hill. From the balcony of the room, we could see Kandy city and Kandy lake.The only thing is their lift is under renovation and we need to climb stairs up and down.

24 Jun
We started the journey at around 9am in the morning right after breakfast. It took 1 hour drive to reach Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage. There are so many elephants there, big and small, we came at their bathing time. Small elephants are cute.

Big!

The entrance ticket to Pinnawala includes the entrance to Herbal Garden. There is a guy bringing us to visit Herbal Garden who said it's free in the beginning then asked for tips afterwards, so be careful here.

We had lunch at Devon Restaurant in Kandy. It was nice apart from, again, the waiting time. Lots of local people have meals there. I finally had my Srilankan food there.

Our next stop is Gadaladeniya Temple. It's another ancient temple around 10km from Kandy. The road going there is small and bumpy.

Statue inside Gadaladeniya Temple

Our final stop and main attraction of Kandy is Temple of the Relic Tooth. We made it there at 6.30pm when the Thevava rites began. Only during Thevava we could see the shrine of the Tooth, the book and the crystal. We were lucky to be able to see all. It's opened only for 10 minutes, hence people are squeezing each other in order to see.

We rush back to hotel after the Thevava to have our ayurvedha massage. It's not a massage at all, I feel they just pour oil and rub it. We had our dinner in the hotel, and by now we set our expectation already that food will be served in around 45 - 60 minutes.

Temple of the Tooth Relic

Another Golden Buddha