Temple of the Tooth and Big Buddha (Kandy, Sri Lanka)

The next stop on our tour was clear far away to a city called Kandy where we were able to go and visit the temple of the tooth.  Apparently the temple has one of Buddha’s actual teeth, so it is quite famous!  It took us five hours to get to the temple, but it was fun to get to see quite a bit of the country side of Sri Lanka as we drove, and luckily it only took us 3 hours to get back.  It really was a lovely temple though.  

Our wonderful tour guide and friend Shammika! 

These beautiful lotus flowers were everywhere for purchase.  
Apparently that is a great gift to give to Buddha as you are visiting in the temple.  

Unfortunately there was a huge long line and a 40 minute wait to actually get to SEE the tooth of Buddha, so we decided against it, but we weren’t too disappointed as the temple grounds were really quite lovely.

Now thats a lot of burning incense! 

And this is a place where you can light a candle representing light and wisdom illuminating the darkness of ignorance. 

This was the Elephant Rajha that apparently carried Buddha at one time.  Therefore the elephant is sacred and its against rules to turn your back to him for pictures. 

Afterwards we headed up the hill to see the big Buddha up on the mountain.  It had a great view of the city!

From there we drove the 3-4 hours home and then stopped for dinner at a little Sri Lankan place just a few minutes from the airport where we thanked Shimmika and our driver for their kindness in taking us all over all day.  We bought them dinner and had them order all our food, and wowsee wow wow was it good! Loved it.  Then it was off to the airport for us for our 1 am flight home home to India!

We loved this display of Sri Lankan masks and drums at the airport! 

After getting our luggage checked in, we headed to the waiting area, but found out that all the seats were taken.  It was so weird though because behind a glass wall were hundreds of seats sitting empty, but there was no way to get to them.  We kept scratching our heads at that and couldn’t figure it out.  So instead we just found an aiport shuttle cart that was sitting empty and sat on that, and then Adam and the kids found a wheelchair and ended up taking each other for rides all over the airport!  I’m sure our family was quite the spectacle.  But the kids loved taking Adam and Adalynn for rides in that thing and going as fast as they could down the hall.

Then after about 10-15 minutes of doing that, the glass wall opened up and the stewardists started allowing passengers into the “seating area” I had mentioned earlier, but we once again had to go through security and have our bags checked.  Man are they thorough.  But alas, we finally got seated and waited an hour for our plane to arrive.  Brans ended up getting a migraine though and threw up in the garbage can – just before boarding!  Poor fella.  But all in all, we were all glad we had been able to visit Sri Lanka!  How awesome it was to see another beautiful country our Heavenly Father created and to get to know the good people of Sri Lanka!! We truly are so blessed to be having these adventures!   

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