Tooth Temple

Sri Lanka Diary Continues

Tooth Temple

Day: 3

Place: Kandy

Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic is a Buddhist temple in the city of Kandy, Sri Lanka. It is located in the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy, which houses the relic of the tooth of Buddha. Since ancient times, the relic has played an important role in local politics because it is believed that whoever holds the relic holds the governance of the country. Kandy was the last capital of the Sri Lankan kings and is a UNESCO world heritage site partly due to the temple. It’s built over a very large area and has 

Inside Temple

many buildings inside it such as a School, Golden canopy, Royal Palace, Audience Hall, National Museum, Kandy Lake and many more. Complete story of Buddha’s tooth is written inside the temple- According to Sri Lankan legends, when the Lord Buddha died, his body was cremated in a sandalwood pyre at Kusinagara, India and his left canine tooth was retrieved from the funeral pyre.

When we were moving towards our next destination-Golden Temple, Dambulla, we stopped by one of the many botanical gardens on the way. Since country is famous for natural herbs, hence we can find a lot of gardens, natural 

School Inside Temple

cosmetics etc. It was too good so we purchased few cosmetics from there-a cream and an oil costing total of 500 INR, sounds costly right, but it was given us after a lot of discounts. So if you plan to spend a lot on cosmetic items, then only buy something from such gardens. We reached Golden Temple and started climbing on the rock without any other thought. Once we reached at top, two things happened simultaneously-we got to knew that only Sri Lankans are allowed without a ticket and it started raining, now we were trapped above the mountain, can’t go down since it was raining neither go inside temple due to ticket, obviously we tried to convince the ticket collector to give us 

Botanical Garden

a ticket there itself but he was a person of non negotiation, even the tickets were very costly-750 INR. So it was useless for us to to go all the way down, get costly ticket and come back, so we moved to next location, which again was closed as we reached late evening. Hence we had to call it a day; it was useless to stay at Dambulla so we again started riding to Colombo, next day’s spot.  

Awesome View From Top of Golden Temple

Golden Temple, Dambulla