We took a private driver from Kamburugamuwa to Kandy, our longest travel day of the Sri Lanka trip. The folks at the Imagine Villa said normally people would break the journey into two, going by train via Ella. The train ride from Ella towards Kandy is supposed to be really scenic.
Anyways I had booked our hotels back in June (as it's busy season now), and the LP had said it was a seven hour train ride from Matara to Kandy, which sounded okay. What the LP didn't mention is that there's two ways to go, the scenic (long) way, or the fast way going back through Colombo. I thought it was seven hours for the scenic route.
We didn't fancy seven hours in 2nd class going back through Colombo, so instead booked the private driver. The fast route by car takes the new (finished in 2013) highway, and about five hours. We booked the driver though the Kandy B&B cause they quoted us a much cheaper rate.
We arrived in Kandy around 12:30pm. Heather said that over our trips, we've now visited Sucre, Salt and Kandy.
We stayed at Hantana Range View, a B&B run by an older couple that reminded me of some of my parents' friends. It had a great view overlooking Kandy.
We had the obligatory tea, which was excellent. Patrick had worked in the tea industry for 45 years, with Patrick and his wife Francis living in estate houses on the tea plantations. A long way to say, they knew their tea. They favoured BOP from a particular estate (I forget which one), served very properly from a white ceramic tea pot, at just the perfect temperature and steepness (degree of steep? steepidity?)
We hadn't had lunch, and also hadn't counted on having the afternoon free (we had been told the drive could take all day). So took a tuktuk into the centre of town, and found a restaurant for lunch, Midland Cafe. Turns out this is place rates highly on tripadvisor, we stumbled across it. Had the rice and curry, which was good, and inexpensive.
There was a sweet shop across the street, so we treated ourselves to some burfi, (an Indian sweet), and a "Lipton tea". Unlike Myanmar, where a Lipton tea meant a black tea, in this place it was sort of a Nespresso for tea, with instant chai-in-a-cup.
Well fed and on a sugar high, we walked around a bit of downtown, scouting out the sites to see the next day. Also stopped into a couple souvenir shops.
The B&B had lent us a cell phone, so that we could call the tuktuk driver to pick us up. Cleaned up back at the hotel, and then went back into town for dinner. Kandy is mostly a dry town, with only tourist hotel restaurants serving alcohol, so we went to the Royal Hotel for dinner. We found out later that the hotel had once been owned by Patrick's grandfather, and only recently purchased and restored. We felt transported back to a colonial era. The food was okay. The staff were very eager, but had no clue. Anyways, we were there for the atmosphere which was great.
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We had breakfast at the B&B (i suppose otherwise it would just be a B), and then took a tuktuk into town. Visited the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. They have three periods a day where the relic is open for viewing (and prayers and offerings) called puja. We timed our visit for the 9:30am puja.
There was a large lineup of devotees already there. We joined the throngs, squeezing into queue and shuffling past the relic. You don't actually see the tooth (it's inside multiple caskets), but it's more about the experience of seeing all the devotees.
Next was the World Buddhism Museum. It's part of the temple complex, and so it's the first time I've visited a museum barefoot.
The museum was excellent. It showed the evolution of Buddhism through the world, and had exhibits from many countries. We were surprised by how many we had already seen, although our reasons were for the ruins. The museum was very extensive, we spent almost two hours there.
Had lunch at the Olde Empire Cafe, which was targeted at tourists, which suited us fine as we wanted the use a clean washroom.
We then took a tuktuk to the botanical gardens. It was pricey to enter ($11 each vs 50 cents for locals) (a lot of sites in Sri Lanka are priced much higher for tourist). We've seen a lot of botanical gardens recently - in Myanmar, Singapore, and now here. There was some cool stuff, the best was the cannonball tree. It was a nice refreshing walk around.
Just as we were leaving the gardens, it started to rain. Got a random tuktuk, except we didn't have an address or phone number. I knew the way by sight, but the driver took a different main road. Aargh. Also we had the rain covers on the tuktuk so we had very little visibility. Ended up back in the centre, so decided to walk back from there as we knew the way.
It was now pouring, and our little fold-up umbrellas kept our head and shoulders dry, but that's about it. We were soaked by the time we reached the B&B, but we had to launder our clothes anyways so it didn't matter. The only thing was our shoes were soaked too. I had my big hiking shoes and Heather had her flats, so we had shoes we could wear for dinner.
We tried another place for dinner, Senani, recommended by Frances. It was overlooking the lake and temple, and we got the last railing-front table. The wait staff here was much better. We were still full from lunch, so just split the deviled cashews (which were excellent) and the chicken biryani. We arranged a pickup time with the hotel tuktuk so we had no issues getting back home :)
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