Saturday, Feb 15th, Kandy, Sri Lanka

Greetings!

My lately very dry feet, and lots of mountain stairs yesterday, have left a heel cut that stopped today''s adventure before noon.  We did get in a visit to the Millennium Elephant Foundation project, however.

MEF serves an important function of sustaining the lives of Sri Lankan elephants used in captivity early in their lives who are abandoned by their owners or become ill.  Funded by tourists and volunteer workers, it has managed to chart a fine line between exploitation and education.

I felt very much akin to their common foot ailments today, and almost joined one of them in the river.  There are 5,000 wild Sri Lankan elephants now, and 130 in captivity.  The nine here came from logging operations, following in their 2,000 year history hauling the stones for Sri Lankan Buddhist temples.

After resting this afternoon, we'll be going to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic here in town which has a special evening ceremony.  At this moment, there are several macaque monkeys sitting on the railing outside our bedroom, wondering if we're going to leave our doors unlocked when we leave tonight.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on: Saturday, Feb 15th, Kandy, Sri Lanka.

Friday, Feb 14th, Kandy, Sri Lanka

Greetings!

Today's adventure is a relatively easy one: Rock Cave, Spice Garden, and Cultural Dance.  We agreed to sleep in and meet Jay at 9:00am.after checking out of the hotel.   The Golden Temple at Dambulla is a large granite five-cave complex 160 meters above the surrounding plain.  We can attest to its height, as we climbed up the endless stairway cut into the mountain.  It's beginning to get a bit depressing to have Jay keep an eye on Pat and I when we do any strenuous activities (like narrow and steep stairs).  I appreciate it, and I wouldn't be as annoyed if it I didn't know that it was necessary.

A monastery for two thousand years, the five caves contain intricate paintings of religious images following the contours of the rock.  The first and last caves have identical 14 meter long statues of Buddha laying on his side, his favorite pupil Ananda.  At his head, Vishnu.

The second cave has 56 standing and seated Buddhas, as well as statues of various Hindu gods.  The third and fourth hold another 50 Buddha statues, several more kings, and expansive ceiling paintings.  This temple is unique, and is one not to miss if you can make the climb.   We were glad we did, and will recommend it to serious temple trekkers.

The Ranweli Spice Garden in Matale is exactly what Pat needed to fine tune her knowledge of herbs and spices, and their use as medicines and food.   Led by a docent/salesman who was quite impressed by her understanding and current uses of each of what he had to show her in the garden, he had to settle for providing her a great neck massage and some skin care lotions.

Before the cultural dance closed out the afternoon, we did stop by the gem store that the town is famous for and buy Pat a Valentine's Day present.  Her birthstone is Amethyst, and four great looking ones now make up a silver bracelet she'll be wearing if we can just find some dress up dinners to attend.

The Young Men's Buddhist Association perform a daily dance and drumming performance at the Kandy Lake Cultural Center.  It's an amazing combination of dance, gymnastics, group drumming, and costumes (including a fire walk) that I'm going to try to make a short YouTube video out of the shots I took, and the sound track I recorded, after I get home (if they approve putting it up).

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Friday, Feb 14th, Kandy, Sri Lanka. 

Thursday, Feb 13th, Dambulla, Sri Lanka

Greetings!

Today, we went in search of temples and elephants.  The destruction of the Sri Lanka in the 10th century was on the scale of all you've seen in the great movie scenes of Troy.  An army commanded by a foreign power burnt the cities to the ground, leaving only foundation stones and columns.

Thousands of homes which housed monks of these temples stand silent vigil to the beauty and craftsmanship of the structures and the culture which flourished between the 4th century BC and the tenth century AD.  Walking among them, we are in awe of the sculptures and their residents.

And our visit wouldn't be complete without another brick stupa.

And statues of Buddha, sitting and lying down.

And finally, our visit wouldn't be as perfect without the elephants in Minneriya National Park.  Aboard one of those huge roaming open-air vehicles, with a driver experienced in navigating the roads and forested areas, we carefully observed lots of mother and baby elephants as they grazed their way across the park.  In the Massai Mara in Kenya, they ride is called the Massai Massage.  Hang on tight, and your muscles and bones will be re-arranged as you race from location to location to see all thaat you can.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Thursday, Feb 13th, Dambulla, Sri Lanka.

Wednesday, Feb 12th, Dambulla, Sri Lanka

Greetings!

Yesterday, we flew from Trichy City, India to Columbo, Sri Lanka.  Our newest driver and guide met us at the airport, and drove us north for five hours to the Palm Village Hotel in Anuradhapura.  It was gorgeous, and I sometimes think this trip is a hopscotch from one top ten resort to another.  They happen to be located near the country's oldest and most magnificent ruins, and the accommodations are unreal.  We'll be here until Friday.

Anuradhapura is a major Buddhist Stupa center, once the capital of Sri Lanka for a thousand years (300BC to 700AD).   The sprawling complex contains a rich collection of archeological and architectural wonders, enormous stupas, ancient pools and crumbling temples.  It also is home to the oldest recorded tree in the world (a 2,300 year old Bodhi) taken from a root of the tree under which Buddha gained enlightenment in India.

We then went to Ruwanweli Maha Seya, guarded by a frieze of 344 elephants, it contains ashes of the Buddha.  When dedicated in 140BC, it was the tallest stupa in the world.

We had some good news at the stupa, following a scare this morning.  Yesterday at lunch, I left my shoulder wallet on the back of a chair at Kincha's Dine In (2 hrs west of here).  Through Facebook, we found the restaurant and phone number, and made arrangements for one of the tour company to rescue it to provide me with it later in the tour.

We visited Jetavanarama (3rd century AD_ and Abhayagiri (1st century BC), two huge fired brick stupas each containing more that 90 million bricks.  A British guidebook from the early 1900s calculated that this was enough bricks to make a 3-meter high wall stretching from London to Edinburgh.  It is still the largest fired brick structure in the world, and just behind the pyramids of Egypt as the largest of the old world structures.

In the 10th century, a Tanail king named Raja Raja conquered Sri Lanka and destroyed most of the structures, leaving columns and foundations circled with intricate granite carvings of dragons, elephants, bulls, and other images.

Lastly, we climbed over a hundred stairs to the base of a large white stupa called Ambasthale in Mihintale (a temple complex where Buddhism first took hold in Sri Lanka).

To see all of the photos taken in the last two days, click on Wednesday, Feb 12th, Dambulla, Sri Lanka.

  

Monday, Feb 10th, Trichy City, India

Greetings!

We had two guides today, Munchi and Sundar, to help us see temples quite distant from each other.  Munchi took us to the Brihadisvara Temple, a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva, on the banks of the Kaveri River near the hotel we stayed at last night.  Built in seven years in the 11th century, its tower is one of the tallest in South India.  At the time of its construction, it had probably the highest structure, longest corridor, and biggest linga in the world.

The world's first complete granite temple, the source of the stone was a mountain 40 miles away.  It took 2,000 elephants, thousands of rolling logs, and 20,000 men to transport the 30,000 tons of rock to the site.  Ramps on all four sides extending out a half-mile in length were used to roll up the stones for the top section.  The very top single piece of granite weighed 60 tons.

On our way back to the hotel, we visited a family who for eleven generations has perfected the bronze lost-wax method to create statues of Hindu figurines.  The album which this post links to contains photos of the complete process, and should not be missed.

We said goodbye to Munchi, and returned to have lunch and relax in our hotel.

Later in the afternoon, we met up with Sundar, who took us to the largest functioning Hindu temple complex in the world.  Only Angkor Wat is larger, but not functioning.  It has twenty-one towers sitting on 155 acres, entered through seven sets of gated concentric enclosures (housing only brahmins in the inside four), built between the 13th and 18th centuries by successive dynasties.  It contains 81 shrines, 39 pavilions, twelve major water tanks (with a capacity of two million liters), and a hall containing 1,000 pillars.  The Ranganathaswamy Temple at Srirangam, Tiruchirapalli (Trichy City), India is a Hindu temple dedicated to Vishnu.  It sits on an island between two rivers, and there is evidence that the site has had a temple in that location since the 6th century BC.

To see all of the many photos taken today, click on Monday, Feb 10th, Trichy City, India.

Sunday, Feb 9th, Thanjavur, India

Greetings!

Today was a long driving day, and Balu did another terrific job of it.  We left after breakfast at 8am, and headed southwest (inland).  Once again, we were to meet up with our guide (Ramesh) at the first of the three temples we would visit (Chidambaram Nataraja Temple).  Outside one of the four entrances, we found several large chariots, which are each dragged around the temple's 40 acre site in a festival in August.  It takes 400 people, and a bunch of strong ropes, to pull the heaviest of them.

The present temple was built in the tenth century when Chidambaram was the capital of the Chola dynasty, making it one of the oldest surviving active temple complexes in South India.  It has the earliest known Amman or Devi temple, a pre-13th century Surya shrine with chariot, shrines for Ganesha, Murugan, and Vishnu, one of the earliest Shiva Ganga sacred pools, and large mandapas for the convenience of pilgrims.

Shiva is the lord of the dance, and this place is designed to celebrate all things dedicated to movement.

Next, we drove to the town of Gangaikonda Cholapuram, and its temple built by Rajendra Chola in 1035AD  to celebrate his victory over a previous dynasty controlling most of southern India.  The name means the one who conquered the Ganges, and he emphasized it by having the kingdoms he defeated each provide a pot of Ganges River water from their lands to a well in his temple.

Our last temple (AiravatesvaraTemple) was also built by the Cholas, and together with the Brihadeeswara Temple in Thanjavur (we're seeing it tomorrow), and the Gangaikondacholapuram (see above), they are considered the Great Living Chola Temples. 

We invite you to read the text at the links provided.  Hinduism as depicted in these temples is far more interesting than we could describe.  But our astonishment lies in the intricacy of the carvings, and the effort it took to construct the temples (over 1100 years of work and re-work).

To see lots more photos taken today, click on Sunday, Feb 9th, Thanjavur, India.

Saturday, Feb 8th, Puducherry, India

Greetings!

Today, we visited a 2,800 member community first begun in the 1920s, and later to develop a huge site by an integral yoga ashram spiritual leader in the late 1960's.  It's called Auroville, was founded by Mirra Alfassa ("the Mother"), and is an experimental township free from discrimination of nationality, language, creed and politics.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a paper-making factory run by the Ashram.  We saw the full operation, and bought some stationery, cards, and gift bags.  We also visited a section of Puducherry wherein the Timal Nadu style of housing architecture could be seen.  In contrast to the setback entrances of most French houses, the Timal designed porches encourage street conversations, and afford sleeping berths for neighborhood transients.

To see a few other photos taken today, click on Friday, Feb 8th, Puducherry, India.