Kandy: Shopping and Sites

We spent a good deal of time wandering around the streets of Kandy and found quite a few interesting buildings and sites.

I feel like I shouldn't have been surprised when I found out this huge green building was a mosque, but somehow I was.  It's really different than any of the mosques I've seen here in Saudi Arabia, but it's definitely got some cool style and details to it.

 Equal opportunity blogger, just up the street we found a church!  One of the few we've seen this past year while traveling.  Somehow churches always end up on the list of must see sites, especially in Italy.  They were especially beautiful there.  In Sri Lanka, it was a much more subdued building as the standard of living isn't nearly as high as in Europe.

To continue with the religious theme, we also saw  Buddha statues and shrines across the city.  This was incredibly common everywhere we visited in Sri Lanka as both Hindu and Buddhism are prominent religions.  What stood out to us the most was the sheer amount of religious diversity in Sri Lanka.  For one I didn't realize that they had such diversity prior to our trip, but it was also refreshing after a long period of being surrounded by only one religion.  Not being a religious person persay, this really doesn't impact me personally, but it was interesting to observe anyway.

 

We wandered in and out of many shops one of which was this bakery/kitchen shop.  It's so unfair that baking items were so easy to stumble upon in Sri Lanka when these things are so hard, or even impossible to find in Saudi Arabia (they even had liquid vanilla!).  I didn't end up buying anything, but being able to browse the tiny shop was nonetheless satisfying.

 

Bangles were wildly popular in Sri Lanka and came in so many different color combinations, but unfortunately they were all of the 'one size fits all' variety, so a no go for me.  I've always wanted to be able to wear bangles, but can't remember a time when I both wanted to and could.  Darn you people with skinny hands. 

 

As part of the prayer process, flowers such as these are placed at the temples.  With such a large demand for flowers, these small booths were numerous and the men hawking them were quite persistent.  I'm not sure if these are purchased for the offering, but I'd imagine they are.   

 

The flowers on the table above are "bloomed" by hand from flowers such as these until they create the large stack of petals that are given as an offering.  Most of the flowers we saw were white, purple, or pink, but I'm not sure if that was a matter of tradition or availability.

Bird and fish feeding was also a popular activity in Kandy.  Instead of feeding the animals bread, we saw a lot of natives buying popcorn from street vendors and feeding that to the animals.  We decided not to feed the animals at this particular time because they were incredibly well fed from those around us, and I don't think popcorn is high on the list of food appropriate for fish and birds.

Check out the rest of our Sri Lanka travels:

Colombo: Beira Lake and Gangaramaya Temple 

Colombo: Dehiwala Zoo

Summer Reading

Colombo: Viharamahadevi Park

Colombo: National Museum

Colombo: Fort

Train Ride to Kandy

Kandy: Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, 1

Kandy: Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, 2
Kandy: Udawattakele National Sanctuary