Today's trip was to the Rock Caves at Dambulla, the Spice Gardens of Matale and Sri Lankan traditional dancing.

What more could you want the day after Sigiriya Rock but to climb another 650 steps to see another temple!! Once again though we had made an early start and though it was hot it was bearable . At the top of the hill you hand in your shoes and walk bare foot to visit 6 caves which hold huge numbers of Buddha figures and temples dating 500 years or more. All of these are carved out if the rock from the hill; incredible.

We then started to make our way to Kandy on the way stopping at a woodcarving factory and and a herb garden. Alison loved the herb and spice garden - all the natural stuff to heal your aches and pains. On leaving our driver stopped at a roadside seller and bought a King Coconut which the seller hacked open so that we could drink the coconut water. To be honest it just tasted like slightly warm water although Alison polished most of it off. In any case it cost 40 rupees which is around 3 pence. Food for thought - if the seller had sold all of the coconuts she had on the stall she would have made around 25p for a day's work. Hard to understand how that constitutes enough money to live on.

We arrived at our hotel mid afternoon - The Mansion - an old colonial house which has 10 rooms and Makes you feel like you are back in the days of the Raj. Ghandi and Gregory Peck have also been guests of the former owner who was governor of the local region. The hotel is around 12km outside Kandy so much quieter but it does make for a bit too much backwards and forwards driving though. A fantastic place to stay even so.

After a quick swim we went into Kandy to see some traditional Kandian dancing which is accompanied by loud drumming and which was followed by several of the dance troupe doing fire eating and walking on hot coals - rather them than me. 

Exhausted we headed back to the Mansion for dinner and sleep.