Day 5 - Cave temples

 

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Today we headed into the mountains to the capital, Kandy. On the way we stopped at Dumbala to visit the cave temples. We were first confronted with a huge golden Buddha. This building is the newer of the temples and pretty spectacular. We climbed up stairs and rock paths to the 5 caves which hold temples with hundreds of Buddha statues. The oldest one had a huge reclining Buddha in quite a tight space. The walls and ceiling of all the caves are decorated with thousands of motifs and paintings telling stories. The caves are quite dim but you can see how vivid the colours are from the flash photos. All the paint is made from natural pigments and apart from a touch up by a king in one temple hundreds of years ago, they are in original condition.

 

There were monkeys everywhere and they are mostly shy apart from one naughty one that spotted a lady getting a polo mint from her bag, and then tried to climb her legs! It followed her for quite a while despite some of the temple guides trying to shoo it away. Animals are never hurt here or even shouted at (un Buddha) so it took a while before it gave up. Pretty funny for us to watch the poor lady but a lesson to remember.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After exploring each of these ancient temples with Pradeep telling us the history and legend for each we went to a wonderful garden where herbs and spices are grown and processed for using in natural medicines. Most Sri Lankans will use natural medicine, Ayurveda therapy. This therapy uses herbs, plants and roots to treat illness and also uses massage. We were taken on a walk through the garden where a doctor explained where the medicines came from and we were able to pick, smell and taste directly from the plants. Then he showed us the medicines once they were made up. We were all treated to massage and tastings. Sarah and Dan enjoyed having their faces massaged with moisteriser with an uplifting and sinus clearing balm. This was a beautiful place and we left armed with information and recipes for healing treatments using plants from our own gardens.

We arrived at Kandy in the late afternoon and drove up a steep, narrow and bumpy road to our hotel. It seems there is no road buses don't travel so it was another interesting ride with a few tight squeezes and manoeuvring that would bring on road rage anywhere else. Not a cross word is ever said though as drivers simply work around each other and nod and wave.

The hotel was stunning, sitting up high on the side of the mountains. We were upgraded to a suite with adjoining rooms. The main room had a mezzanine bedroom and ensuite with sitting area downstairs. The beds were huge and had net covering much to the delight of the kids another new experience. We had spectacular views across the valley. As always the first priority was the pool which was just as fabulous as the rest of the hotel although being up in the hills a bit on the chilly side so the swim was quite brief.

Dan

• The caves because they had lots of different Buddhas.
• The spices because they gave you a massage.
• The new hotel because it has a massive pool.
• The caves because there were five different caves.
• The hotel because it is nice and it's a 4 star hotel.

Sarah

• The herbal garden because we got to see lots of herbs we hade not even heard of.
• The healing centre because he massaged our faces.
• The caves because of all the interesting Buddha expressions.
• The new hotel because we get to stay in a double story suite.
• The caves because there were five different caves.

Rich

The Herb gardens win it for me today.

Perhaps I have been inured to temples over the last few days. I found it interesting and enlightening. With western medicines being too expensive for most Sri Lankans they turn mostly to natural medicine. Much of which they can make themselves from herbs and plants they can grow or collect from the forests using recipes from the Ayurveda experts. As our expert took us round the beautiful and tranquil gardens he showed many of the local plants and explained many of the native ailments both internal and external and how they are helped by the medicines made from the natural plants. It soon became clear that many of our western medicines are simply versions of these natural ones. The visit finished with a very pleasant massage and facial and of course a visit to the shop!!!