Sri Lanka – Kandy

Waking up early the next morning, (Day-2) we got ready and the moment, we stepped out, the view of Kandy Lake was quite mesmerizing.

Kandy Lake, also known as Kiri Muhuda or the Sea of Milk, is an artificial lake in the heart of the hill city of Kandy, Sri Lanka, built in 1807 by King Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe and now acts as the main body of water in Kandy in central Sri Lanka.

We went around the marketplace just to get a feel of Kandy.

We found another tamil restaurant,  Balaji Dosai – a low-key establishment specializing in South Indian cuisine. Delicious, soft dosas topped with aromatic chutneys and layers of spicy vegetables caught our palate. The restaurant offered several different types of dosas including ghee, masala, onion, and plain, all of which came served with hot, piping sambar. As we were not sure when again we would get such delicious food, we binged heavily and started our day!

Kataragama Devalaya – is a Murugan ( Tamil deity) temple. Out of excitement visited the temple.

Here, Moolavar Lord Muruga, considered to be in an angry avtar is hidden behind a screen.

Having the satisfaction of taking blessings from our favoured deity from a tamil temple abroad, we walked next to Sri Dalada Maligawa which is called as the temple of the sacred tooth of Buddha.

Sri Dalada Maligawa – a Buddhist temple located in the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy, it houses the relic of the tooth of the Buddha. Since ancient times, the relic has played an important role in local politics because it is believed that whoever holds the relic holds the governance of the country. Kandy was the last capital of the Sri Lankan kings and is a World Heritage Site mainly due to the temple.

In this sweltering hot room, devotees light up their joss sticks for prayers. It’s quite difficult to even stand inside there for more than 10 minutes. There’s a large urn outside where you can put your joss sticks after praying.

Another interesting thing is a museum dedicated to the Maligawa Tusker – Raja, who has carried the golden casket with the tooth relic in over 50 years of Kandy Esala Perahera. He died in 1988 from illness after many attempts to heal him went in vain. His remains were taxidermied.

Although there are lots of Buddhist temples in and around Kandy, since we were running out of time, we decided to proceed towards our next destination – Nuwara Eliya

On the way, there were lots of tea estates and plantations. We decided to get into one of these. We stopped at Glenloch Tea Factory as it was our driver’s choice.

We were taken on a guided tour to see the processing from tea leaves to a cup of brewed tea. The tour was fascinating for a tea drinker like me. It certainly shed light and welcomed a newfound appreciation for the tea I’ve been drinking.

This tea processing and sampling therefore is highly recommended. Almost all the tea factories here welcome tourists  to buy boxes of tea, which would make great gifts.

Surprisingly most of the tea pickers are women and mostly Tamils.  To make 1 pound of dried black tea, about 4-5 pounds of fresh green tea leaves are needed.

We moved towards our next destination – Nuwara Eliya where we needed to hunt for food and accommodation too!