We got picked up from Gal Oya in the morning to make our way to Kandy, the center of Sri Lanka. I had wanted to see Kandy, but we also had this stop to get us closer to the airport for the following day's flight to the Maldives. It was going to take us approximately 4 hours to get to Kandy, and would have been another two on top of that to get to the airport. And four hours in Sri Lanken driving is a longggg time.
There were some cool things about Kandy, and some not so cool. Kandy is the religious Buddhist capital of Sri Lanka and a pilgramige centre. There are beautiful views throughout the city and a botanical gardens which we didn't have time to visit. There is a world heritage site, The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, or Sri Dalada Maligawa, which is a Buddhist temple. It is located in the royal palace complex, which houses the relic of the tooth of the Buddha.
However, Kandy is also very crowded and parts of it are very touristy. It took us a while to get out of the main part of the city, but before we left entirely we made two stops. The first was to a wood carving shop. This I found really interesting, the shop owner showed us the different types of wood they use and what they're used for, and then also gave us a demonstration of how different ingrediants or plants are mixed together to form dyes, which would have been used as paints years and years ago. The second stop was for lunch, and next door to lunch was a gem shop. Ram had been telling us throughout how Sri Lanka is known for the sapphire and we should stop in to see how they are gathered, cleaned and processed. It used to all be by hand and very manual but now on larger pieces of land it is done with machinery to cover more ground and speed up the process. Well, while interesting to learn how it's done, it was like walking into a used car dealership. I would skip this if anyone ever visits ...
We continued on our way through windy, narrow back roads up and down mountains to get to our hotel for our final night in Sri Lanka. We stayed at the Roysth House which was a cute little hotel up a road that definitely should have been a one way. That night we had traditional Sri Lankan curry with a variety of fruits, vegetables, and rice. They served it with some spicy sauce on the side, which most of the waiters said was not spicy to them, but Jon and I could barely eat it! After a delicious dinner it was off to bed for an early pick up the next morning as our time to Sri Lanka was coming to an end.