Kandy: Sri Lanka’s final dynasty
With the heavy backpack, I walked out of the air-conditioned airport terminal and into South Asia’s ruthless summer heat. According to travel reports I found online, there’s a bus station around 10 minutes from the airport, where I could catch the chicken bus to Kandy.
Soon I found myself walking by some kind of highways without pedestrians. Many drivers rolled down their windows to offer me a ride, but I just politely smiled and continued walking. There was a sign depicting Colombo’s ambition to become a South Asian metropolitan, also a traffic signs with an oxcart on it.
The “bus station” seemed to be no more than 4 shabby stops and what seemed to be chairs. I waited for several minutes, but apparently all passing buses were heading to Colombo. Finally a bus driver told me the real bus station was actually on the other side of the road, and his bus was heading there.
Flowers and buddha statues seemed to be a recurring theme on Sri Lankan buses. I hopped on the bus and in 5 minutes I saw somewhere that indeed looked much like a bus station, with several stores and eateries on the side. A friendly dude helped me locate the bus to Kandy.
Bus to Kandy took around 4 hours. I happened to sit next this young lady from Guangdong, China, traveling with 3 of her friends.
Kandy looked like a very vibrant place, as even ordinary street cornerswere of interest to me. Sinhalese script was quite distinct, being more round than Thai, Laotian and Khmer, but not as circle-ish as Burmese.
As Sri Lanka’s past capital , Kandy is most famous for the iconic Temple of the Tooth, one of the many temples in the world that claims to house the relic of Buddha’s tooth (there is actually another such temple in Taiwan, but I haven’t been).
After checking in at the hostel I went to explore the temple. At this time of year Kandy should be celebrating a festival, where elephants would be roaming on the road, but I only saw dogs and chickens here.
Legend has it that the tooth was smuggled by Hemamali, an Indian princess, in her hair. Since then it had been the symbol of royalty, enshrined by successive kingdoms. As Sri Lanka’s capital migrated southwards, the tooth moved along the way. The current temple was built in the 16th century by Vimaladharmasuriya I, monarch of the Kingdom of Kandy, the final Sri Lankan kingdom before the Europeans arrived.
The Royal Palace (bottom center) was also in proximity.
Visiting in the evening, I got a chance to also see the vibe of the temple after dark.
Sri Lanka’s colonial history was strikingly similar to Malacca, where I was the previous day. First came the Portuguese, then came the Dutch, finally the British. At one point the Dutch occupied the entire coast, rendering only the inland to the kingdom.
The Kingdom, however, outlived the Dutch. Around 1800, as in Malacca, the British put the Dutch rule to the end. Following a decade of tension and resistance, as well as a bloody uprising in 1817, Ceylon was annexed by the British Crown. The final Kandyan King, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha, was taken prisoner to Southern India.
Interestingly, the last dynasty of the Kingdom of Kandy, the Nayaks, were Telugu and Tamil-speaking people who were originally from southern India. Although practicing Hinduism themselves, they were also patrons for buddhist temples as rulers; some of them were quite devoted to spread buddhism.
The Tamil-Sinhalese conflict was yet the major theme of Sri Lanka’s history in the last century.
The temple was full of visitors, local and foreigns ones alike.
I felt perfectly safe walking around the temple at night. Trip to Sri Lanka so far has been eye-opening, adventurous yet comfortable. Not sleeping on a bed the previous night, I was surprisingly still energetic. After visiting the temple, I continued walking on the street, touring souvenir stores and had dinner in a local restaurant. I initially planned to stay in Kandy for 2 days, but now that I’ve seen the town for quite a bit, I may be able to venture further inland — to somewhere magnificent that I didn’t dare to put in my itinerary originally due to time constraint.
