Sri Lanka – Kandy is Dandy

Kathy Hornbach
July 31, 2013
Cultural Triangle #3
Kandy is Dandy
The second-largest city in Colombo, and its cultural capital, is the delightfully named town of Kandy. It is the last of the ancient imperial cities, and thus is home to the current instanciation of the Temple of the Tooth — the resting place of the most sacred Sri Lanken relic, a tooth of the Buddah. The tooth is kept in the innermost of seven coffins, which are viewable only at a distance through a small window (in the picture to the right, it’s the gold object viewable between our backs) – not a particularly impressive view. More interesting is the priest’s entrance to this central temple, flanked by elephant tusks & colorful drummers (in topmost picture). Watch/listen to the temple drummers by clicking here. The temple also houses a library of ancient Buddhist scriptures, recorded on palm leaves and bound together (left). In 1998, the Tamil Tigers exploded a bomb at the external entrance to the temple, causing extensive damage. Fortunately, little damage was done to the temple artifacts. The sacredness of this site was offset by the local guide we used – an old man who mumbled in heavily accented English. All four of us heard him say “tooth fairy” when he thought he was saying “tooth relic”. We’d hear things like “The tooth fairy was brought to this city in the 1600s” and “Many people come here to worship the tooth fairy”. Combining the tooth fairy, the turbaned drummers, and the elephant-tusked doorway, it was quite a surrealistic experience.
Kandy is also famous for local dance, involving colorful costumes & drums & good-looking dancers with bare chests, and a firewalk at the end – see the actual walks here. The performance we saw was performed by the YMBA – the Young Men’s Buddhist Assocation. (There is also a YMMA, Young Men’s Muslim Association, in town).
Kandy is built around a lake, and is in the lower hill country, so it was a welcome respite from the 90 degree heat that we had been experiencing. Besides temples and culture, Kandy has a well maintainted and delightful botanical garden, which contains, among other things, the palms that produce the world’s largest coconuts.


Outside of Kandy is one of the most famous tourist attractions in all of Sri Lanka, the elephant orphanage. Originally set up to truly house orphans, it now seems to focus more on the tourist angle. Most of the elephants seem to be teenagers or older (former orphans?), and some of the grown-up orphans have babies of their own. When grown, they go off to become working elephants. The big events are feeding the babies – think gallons and gallons of milk; and taking the entire herd down to the river to bathe (which requires taking 100 elephants across a busy highway and down a crowded shopping street). They sell various souveniors, including paintings done by elephants, and paper made out of elephant dung (we decided to forgo any purchases).

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