A trip to the temple of the tooth in Kandy is a must if you haven’t been before. It’s situated right on the lake in Kandy so you can’t miss it. Ladies have to cover up shoulders and knees and unlike Thailand, they don’t provide sarong rental in Sri Lanka so you’ll have to bring or buy one. You can buy trousers or sarongs outside the main gates or anywhere in town for under 1,000 rupees (less than €7). Short sleeve t-shirts are fine just no shoulders on show. Men get away with knee length shorts and children get away with anything.

You leave your shoes inside at a shoe-minder place inside near the ticket desk. The man minding them will look for a tip when you come back. We gave 100 rupees, seemed to be about right. There’s a separate ticket office for locals and foreigners. That’s usually the case in Sri Lanka, foreigners pay more than 10 times what the locals pay. This gets a bit annoying sometimes. I don’t mind paying more but 10-15 times more is a bit much.

Apparently there are free audio guides you can get from the ticket office, we only found out about them afterwards. Bummer, I love audio guides :-).

It’s worth visiting the temple at one of the times when the “puja” (prayers or offerings) are happening. At these times, the door leading to the heavily guarded room where the tooth is kept is opened and you can queue to view it. Note they don’t actually open the caskets, that only happens once every 5 years. Apparently thousands of people come to catch a glimpse of it then.

Every day, people bring offerings of flowers, food and robes for the monks. You can buy flower offerings inside the temple grounds. Our girlies loved placing them on the tables in front of the room the shrine is kept in.

Kandy is famous for a festival called the “Kandy Esala Perahera” which is held over 10 days in August each year. If you get the chance it would be amazing to go then. It’s a festival to honour the sacred tooth. Each day there is a procession from the temple and Devales led by thousands of Kandyan dancers and drummers. Then there are elephant processions led by 50 or more elephants. The Maligawa Tusker elephant is the main elephant who carries the tooth relic in it’s caskets on his back. He’s decorated from head to toe and from the pictures we’ve seen, looks amazing, all lit up. I think if you get the chance to visit Kandy at this time, it would be amazing. Here’s a picture from this site where you can book tickets.

We visited the temple in the morning. In the main hall, a guide approached us (they do everywhere in Sri Lanka). Anyway we got chatting to him as he showed us around. He was really interesting. It turns out he was taught by an Irish teacher who studied in Trinity college. He has worked as a guide there for 40 years and is the head guide and used to show any dignitaries around. He showed Prince Charles around a few years ago when he visited and his father showed the Queen around in her visit not long after her coronation. He showed us his photos of these events, proud as punch. So he was the guide for royalty! And….. The Kelly’s from Dublin :-).

He told us we should come back that evening for Puja to see the drummers. We could come back with our same tickets. So we pottered off and visited the other rooms with the intention of returning that evening.

The other rooms are definitely worth seeing. There’s one with pictures all around the wall telling the story of Buddah from his enlightenment under a Bo tree to his death depicted by the reclining Buddah. Freya loved reading the story as she walked around. It’s a bit like the stations of the cross at home but without the catholic guilt :-).

There’s also a room dedicated to the most loved Tusker Maligawa elephant who ever worked at the temple, Raja. The Maligawa elephant is the lead elephant who carries the tooth relic during Esala Perahera. All Maligawa Tuskers must fulfil certain physical requirements. Only male elephants are permitted to carry the relic and most importantly they must be “Sathdantha” elephants, meaning that all seven parts of the body – the four legs, trunk, penis and tail – must touch the ground when they stand upright. Raja was this huge male elephant with a white trunk, he was the Maligawa elephant for over 40 years. He was so good at his job and so loved nationally that a national day of mourning was declared on his death and a decision made to stuff him. He’s now standing guard in the Raja museum in the temple of the tooth and is well worth a visit.

We met a really nice monk “Wilapola” in one of the temples. He was just visiting from near Colombo but loved our girlies and was all chat about what we were doing. He was really well travelled himself and very interesting to chat to. I’d like to think our paths will cross again. We swapped email addresses and off we went.

We came back for Puja that evening and were really glad we did. It’s pretty special. Firstly a group of drummers (about 4 of them) start drumming in the main drummers hall. The sound is amazing, they’re dressed in traditional dress (topless with sarongs, large cumberbands and hats). There’s also a guy playing a kind of trumpet. They play for about 15 minutes, then the monks who live in the temple come out of their rooms, wash their feet and open up the inner chambers where the relic is kept.

I’m not sure on the morning time puja but the evening one is at 6.30pm.

To see the relic (well the caskets it’s inside, you queue to go upstairs. We queued for ages, about an hour. Our fault really, we were slow off the mark joining the queue, then got sick of queuing and left it only to find it started moving really quickly again. Agh! So we rejoined again and eventually made it up. We arrived up just to catch a glimpse of the caskets, we couldn’t actually walk around the inner chamber where they sit (we could if we’d stayed in the queue from the beginning. Grrr :-). There was something magical about the whole ritual though, I was glad we’d done it. It’s definitely one for the list if you haven’t seen it before.

For more things to do in Kandy, have a look at our top 10 list here.