SRI LANKA, KANDY: CULTURAL DANCERS AND THE TEMPLE OF THE TOOTH

Kandy, located in about the exact center of Sri Lanka, is one of the larger cities in the country. It is situated in the hills where most of the country's famous tea is grown. The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in part because it was the last capital of the Sinhala kings, who ruled until the British occupation in 1815.

Our guide Sanjay dropped us off at Kandy Lake, a man-made lake built in 1807 in the center of the city. It has a circumference of about two miles, and we strolled around about half of it.

There is a nice sidewalk along the lake shore:

We enjoyed the beautiful scenery, and we noted trees with a bountiful crop of jackfruit:

But even more than jackfruit, the trees were full of nesting black-crowned night herons:

There were hundreds of nests, each with a pair of birds sitting in it:

I learned an important lesson from these birds. No, it's not about two-parent families. It is about not standing under a tree with hundreds of large nesting birds in it. My cheek and my camera got hit by an enormous blog of white goo dropped nonchalantly from above. I was so grossed out that I didn't think to pull out my cell phone to record the defacing of my person and my equipment. but it's probably for the better, right?

It is so much better to focus on the pleasant scenery instead:

We had tickets to a dance performance at the Kandy Cultural Centre, and not just any tickets, but tickets on the front row center aisle in a completely full house. We were impressed. However, I was slightly less impressed by the only bathroom:

The program was about an hour of cultural dances--lots of drum beating and nasally singing, and some gorgeous costumes on beautiful girls and average-looking men:

During the middle of the show, the plastic chair that a man was sitting in just down the row from us collapsed with a loud crash. I think the leg broke. He survived and the dancers didn't miss a beat (although they were definitely watching him to see what would happen).

The program ended with a fire dance:

. . . and then a series of brave/crazy men eating fire and traipsing across burning coals, with audience members called up on stage to be up-close eyewitnesses:

So why don't their clothes catch on fire?

After the program, we walked next door to the Temple of the Tooth, a shrine that houses Sri Lanka's most important Buddhist relic: Buddha's tooth.

According to legend, after Buddha was cremated in India in 543 BC, his remains were divided up into eight parts, and each part was given to a different kingdom, with stupas being built to house each piece within each part.

Centuries later, Buddha's tooth was smuggled from India to Sri Lanka in the hair of an Indian princess in the 4th century AD. It was first placed in a temple in Anuradhapura, but then, to keep it safe, it was moved around to various temples located all over the country until it finally settled in Kandy in 1592.

The original 16th-century temple and the palace surrounding it was plundered by the invading Dutch in 1765. The last king of Kandy, the same one who built the lake, renovated the shrine in the 19th century. It was again badly damaged in a bombing raid in 1998 during Sri Lanka's civil war, but it has since been restored:

There is a moat around the complex, just like a fairy tale castle:

Elephants are everywhere--or at least carvings and paintings of elephants:

Judging by the decor, this is a very, very, VERY important place:

In the center of the main floor is the Shrine of the Tooth itself. It is two stories tall and very ornate:

Somewhere behind those doors is The Tooth:

We stood there for quite a long time watching Very Important People go in and out of the room:

There was never-ending, very loud drumming, so loud that we could hardly hear each other, but which made it seem like Something Momentous was about to happen:

Crowds gathered around every time the door cracked open, but nothing of significance seemed to be happening:

Eventually we wandered off to look at the other treasures in the temple, including golden and marble Buddhas (of course), many of which are gifts from foreign countries:

We noticed a long line of visitors snaking up the stairs to the second level, so even though we did not have any idea what they were in line to see, we got in the line. Much to our frustration (which was getting more and more extreme as we battled the crowds and noise), the line didn't seem to be moving at all, and since we had no idea what we were waiting to see, eventually we gave up there too.

As I read about the site now that we are home, I think the second floor is the actual Tooth Relic Chamber where pilgrims come to pray and leave their offerings. The Tooth itself is kept in a jewel- and gold-encrusted casket shaped like a stupa. Pilgrims don't actually get to SEE the Tooth or even get very close to it, but in filing past the door, they might get a glimpse of the golden casket. Supposedly there are SEVEN caskets, one inside another, protecting the Tooth.

This is a place where it would have been nice to have a guide who could have told us what was going on. We were on our own and clueless, frustrated by the lack of information in what we later discovered is Sri Lanka's most important Buddhist shrine.