Sharon Inn Kandy

Ai bu quelques mojitos hier soir, suis rentre vers 23h15 un peu chaud.<br>Me suis leve a 5h ce matin, mon taxi est arrive vers 5h45 et suis arrive a l'aeroport a l'heure. Ai achete un lonely planet sur le Srilanka car je n'avais aucune idee de ce que j'allais voir...<br>Apres 45 mn de vol me voila atterri a l'aeroport a 1h30 de Colombo. Decide d'eviter Colombo et prends un bus local pour aller a Kandy, pour 60 centimes 115km, dans les montagnes au centre ...

... with this Hindu pantheon god being a guardian of SL and kataragama Devale, worshipping Skanda. Again, absolute evidence of multi-faith temples working in close harmony with each other on the same site, just like India.<br><br>Kandy lake<br><br>I would have loved to stay longer, but with such a short trip I had to move on the following day, so I got up early to walk right around the lake. I walked part way round, marveling at how lovely it was, before noticing 2 ...

... was more to have an escape from Singapore, which is expensive and quite boring (and yes, I had been there 11 years ago as well). Tanjung Pinang was new for me and the next day I visited nearby Penyengat Island with a colourful mosque and walked around half the island. It wasn't all that special, but it was nice enough. After two nights in Tanjung Pinang I took the early morning ferry back to Singapore. I went to the airport and left my big backpack at the left luggage - which was ...

... people bring offerings into the temple, monks appear and then we're back upstairs amongst the devotees. We pass through the throng trying to glimpse the relic casket and then downstairs into another temple - where a crystal Buddha is displayed - then it's out and into the library where some ancient texts are stored. Back out to the gardens for a look around and then off again. We had parked in a council carpark and we walk back taking in the ...

... the real action starts each day at two o'clock when the elephants, all eighty five of them, are led down to the river for their daily bath. We were extremely dubious, how come this fairly scruffy hotel had the prime spot when there was a very expensive restaurant to the left with a viewing platform and a real tourist trap of a hotel to the right, overlooking the road the elephants used to reach the river, they didn't pay $2 to use it. The beer was cool, the weather warm ...

... and Dutch. The city, Sri Lanka's second largest, has a unique cultural heritage which is apparent everywhere - in its music, dance and architecture. Equally important, on this trip, was the fact Sri Lanka were due to host England in the first Test match of the series, beginning on 1st December. Desperate to sample some culture before the Barmy Army marched into town, I ...

... was a little more keen than the guy at the first place. The one catch was that I needed to show my Indian visa before they'd sell me the ticket; this made me chuckle of course, since the surly lady at the Indian consulate said that in order to get a transit visa I had to show them a ticket first. So I got around all that BS by getting a tourist visa, but what an idiotic system! I guess that's what happens in a country where the government needs the ...

... starts at 6pm I was told, but really it starts at the temple at 8h05pm, an auspicious time apparently. So depending on where you are sitting or standing you could easily wait until 9pm like I did the first 2 nights to see anything! Mind you there was a lot of action during the wait. Female police officers were walking the streets checking everyone's bag though we had already gone through a security check while entering ...

... and discussing the side effects I had from the first set (rashes and blisters) I was sent off to the injection room again (oh joy) The doctor had been very sympathetic re my blisters but said that as rabies was in his considered opinion more serious that itchy blister and rashes I still needed more injections ( can't argue there really ) . There was a very large queue this time for people waiting for there first set of post rabies injections and it really reinforced that dog ...