This morning our start was delayed because the coach being used by some Chinese tourists was blocking the hotel road as they were taking a long time to settle their bills.Their rep was getting very uppity with the reception desk but it transpired it was all down to some of their party drinking the whiskey from the minibar and replacing it with coffee.He didn't look quite so uppity when he boarded the bus with 2 opened bottles of whiskey as we left.Our driver told us what had happened and that the chinese were notorious for it.The delay was caused by a manual check of every one of their minibars.
Our first port of call was the Dambula Caves Rock Temple which dates from 1st century .After a steep climb up the hillside watching the monkeys cavorting you come upon 5 caves filled with statues of the Buddha and wall paintings.The last king of Kandy built a veranda enclosing the caves as the murals were exposed and damaged over the millennia.We passed villagers gathering in the rice as we started to climb into the heart of Sri Lanka,stopping off to view the Hindu style temple that is actually a Buddhist one that had been raised 24 feet to prevent it being submerged in another valley damming.It has a Kama Sutra wall motif on it and also Vishnu and Ganesh either side of the Buddha.This is quite common in Sri Lanka to find a Hindu shrine in a Buddhist temple.We stopped off at an exotic spice garden and had a tour which included a short Ayurvedic shoulder massage using oils from the plants on site.
Eventually we reached Kandy,the last capital before colonisation and another world heritage site.It is here that the sacred tooth relic is housed in the old palace and temple complex.Just before we arrived we stopped off to see the extraordinary Anglican Church,built to resemble the old royal audience buildings,that is part of the most prestigious school in Sri Lanka.
Our last visit of the day was to watch a performance of Kandyan dancing and drumming.We both thought it bore no resemblance to Indian dancing but more Eastern or even Central American.