DAY 5: KANDY

TEMPLES, TUSKERS & TRADITIONAL CRAFTS

What child is not going to like the sound of a town called KANDY?  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the main sight here concerns a tooth – the Buddha’s, housed in its own temple. The town itself, another former capital and UNESCO World Heritage site, is an interesting place to explore, full of old colonial buildings and shop-filled side streets that are abuzz with tuk-tuks and busy stalls piled high with dried fish and garlands of exotic flowers. Kandy is set against verdant hills that tumble down to an equally green lake, along the shores of which sits the TEMPLE OF THE TOOTH [open daily from 5.30am | Rs.1500], the most revered building in the country. The Buddha’s tooth, believed to have been smuggled into Sri Lanka from India in the fourth century AD and ensconced in Kandy for over 425 years, is rarely on display, but the temple complex itself is quite an experience, with locals thronging to light prayer candles and make offerings of flowers and rice outside the elaborately gilded shrine itself – lotus leaves are on sale outside the temple’s entrance if your kids want to join in with their own offerings. Before you leave the compound, make sure you pay a visit to the mighty RAJA TUSKER, a venerated (and now stuffed) elephant who once had the honourable task of carrying the sacred tooth during the annual Esala Perahera festival; he’s in a building behind the main temple, along with the various paraphernalia he used to wear each year.

It's worth returning to the Temple of the Tooth for the crowded evening puja (daily at 6.30pm), when drumming fills the air and you can line up to get a (very brief) glimpse of the golden casket that contains the tooth.

TOP TIP Kandy is a centre of TRADITIONAL CRAFTS, and you can pick up some great souvenirs at one of the workshops that make and sell drums, Kandyan-style batiks, elephant carvings and scary-looking kolam masks. A fun mini shopping tour is to charter a tuk-tuk up to Rajanima Crafts and Gunatilake Batiks, next door to each other on Rajapahilla Mawatha, the road that winds up the hill on the opposite side of the lake to the Temple of the Tooth; ask your tuk-tuk driver to stop off at the lovely viewpoint over Kandy on the journey back down into town.

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