Sri Lanka: Eye-Kandy and the "Sweet" Tooth

We immediately knew that Sri Lanka would be much different than anywhere we'd ever travelled to as soon as we got off of our plane, as there were dozens of shops in the airport selling an abundance of electric appliances, most oddly, washers and driers - quite strange we thought.
Our first stop was the chaotic city of Kandy in the hill country, which seemed like a Sri Lankan version of Manhatten, except instead of thousands of cabs there were just as many tuk-tuks, the Asian three-wheeled version of a taxi - all weaving and maneuvering the streets alongside huge buses, humans, and cows. The driving here is on dodgey 2-laned roads, with a sort of organized chaos - frightening near head-on passing, and much exuberant honking. We found it best to look at the gorgeous countryside rather than at the constant flow of oncoming traffic. We've yet to see a woman driver in this country, as the men (and cows and oxen) seem to own the roads.

We had some cultural eye-candy in Kandy, which is situated in the center of the country, and is surrounded by lush green, jungled hills. At the city center is a large man-made lake, which we stayed across the street from at the Queens Hotel. The rather old hotel was renamed in honor of Queen Elizabeth when she visited the city many years ago, and is 150 years old (Sri Lanka is a former British colony which was once called Ceylon.) We visited the city's most holy site, called the Tooth Relic temple, which houses a tooth of the Buddha. The "Buddha Tooth" has been moved around the country numerous times over the last few thousand years to protect it. That same night we saw a special Kandyan dance performance which included 14 five-minute dances. Our favorites were the fire-walking dance, and the circus-style plate spinning using sacred discs (similar to freestyle frisbee).
Sri Lanka has several ruins and ancient cities, that are holy sites and are thousands of years old. We visited three of these areas, and one of these sites, Sigiriya Rock, is an amazing tower formation that once had extensive structures on top, and was built by monks as a meditation temple. The 1200 stair, step climb to the top of the rock took us past caves and through bouldered labyrinths, with a view that would have been fantastic, however the rain that day was quite heavy. No worries, as the next ancient temple that we visited, called Dambulla, was built into a series of shallow caves that contained over 150 incredible golden Buddha images, and each cave had wildly painted ceilings. Michaelangelo would have been hard-pressed to create such a scene. It was simply spectacular.
Various Ancient City Photos:





















Every town that we've seen has at least one giant Buddha image, often dozens. Most of the villages that we drove through or visited were bustling with people, and we saw very few Westerners. Tourism is way down due to the long-standing, and ongoing civil war (currently, mostly in the northern region), and the only thing unusual that we noted were the random checkpoints with armed soldiers standing guard.

Sri Lankan cuisine is delicious, and is similar to Indian food. It features spiced curries, mounds of rice, shredded coconut dishes, and lots of fruit and pastries. There seems to be a bakery on nearly every corner, and the local beer, Lion Lager, is the perfect thirst quencher on the hot and humid days, which can be stiffeling. There have been many wildlife sightings as well. We've encountered many, many monkeys of all sorts, Asian elephants, swimming monitor lizards, and even a rare Sri Lankan wild jackal pair, crossing the road.
Various Wildlife Photos: