Kandy

The road from Dambulla to Kandy is much better than those we had travelled on earlier. It is sealed. Our driver was also a bit more of a risk-taker (not to the point of being uncomfortable, but definitely less relaxing!) than Rolland, so it was a faster journey all round.

There are a couple of interesting sites along this road, so we arranged to pop in on our way past.

Nalanda is a very pretty little ruined Buddhist temple in the forest. Our next stop, Aluvihara is a series of monastic caves built into rock. The paintings in one of these caves show devils punishing sinners in hell. One picture shows people being hammered onto a thorn tree; it is certainly enough to put you off misbehaving! The next cave had nearly life-size models of the pictures. Gruesome!! Our final stop was at a Hindu temple in Matale. The detail in the images is incredible and we were fortunate to be able to look around during a service.

After considerable hunting, we found our accommodation, a quiet spot tucked away in the Kandy hills. It was so peaceful that we decided to relax there for the afternoon. Eleanor and Leo spent most of it playing with the owners and their family while we caught up on blog posts and photos. The evening meal was delicious, Adrian's desire for Sri Lankan curry is at least partially quenched.

We visited the Temple of the Sacred Tooth, where one if Buddha's teeth is kept. The story goes that it was snatched from the fire of his cremation and smuggled into Sri Lanka in a princess' hair. It has moved around Sri Lanka and occasionally been pinched, but now rests in Kandy. The temple is beautiful and right on the edge of Kandy Lake, so after our visit we went for a short walk around the lake.

The New Zealand cricket team were in Kandy while we were there, but as we didn't have time to get to a 20/20 match, we will try to get tickets to one day of the test in Galle next week.

We changed accommodation that afternoon (as we left it too late to book a place for three nights!) and spent the rest of the day sitting on our new balcony listening to the river and watching the rain. At night the sound of nature is incredibly loud; the river, birds and insects are all competing. We had to speak up to hear each other across a small coffee table. What way to spend a couple of evenings.

This guest house is run by a couple with three children aged between 18 and seven. They are all great with Eleanor and Leo, but Jason (the seven year old) must have wondered what hit him when his father told him to play with Eleanor and he spent the rest of his afternoon being bossed around by a three year old! Leo takes a little longer to warm up, but once he relaxes he is almost as involved in it all as Eleanor. They were so busy playing together that we were hardly needed, so had a real holiday.

The next morning we visited Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage, where they have about 80 elephants of all ages, including two tiny (relatively speaking!) ones recently rescued from agricultural wells. Eleanor and Leo had a great time watching them eat and bathe in the river; a beautiful sight! They even had the opportunity to feed an elephant bananas which was quite a thrill, although Eleanor was a bit scared when it got close.

We loved being able to get so close, but did think the elephants must have an awful lot of human contact. It was also sad to see an elephant tethered when he clearly didn't want to be, even if if was only so he could drink his milk. Maybe if visitors were kept further away it wouldn't have been necessary.

On our way to the orphanage we found a couple beside the road with two porcupines, so we stopped for a look. They were healthy looking and tame, so it was quite amazing to see them, but there is definitely something not right about having this sort of animal on a lead by the side of the road.

All in all it was a great day, despite being a little uncomfortable ethically at a couple of points.

Tomorrow we catch a train to Ella right up in the hills. Both the journey and the destination are meant to be beautiful, so we are very much looking forward to it.