In Kandy, our first major stop was the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic or as it's called in Sri Lanka the Sri Dalada Maligawa. This is a pretty big complex, we spent the better part of the afternoon wandering around.
Small bridge over the moat looking towards the entrance of the temple.
Intricate stone carvings over one of the doorways. Like all of the other temples, we left our shoes at the entrance and walked around barefoot the whole time.
Stone pillars inside the temple.
Shutters for windows inside the temple.
Outside the tooth relic chamber. Leaving flowers and a prayer is very popular, since this is an active temple, so it was incredibly busy inside with so many people milling about. There surprisingly weren't that many tourists inside.
Buddhist flags waving around the temple. Steve really liked these flags but we never found ones for sale that were of any decent quality. Most of them weren't even hemmed and if they were, it wasn't straight.
Inside another temple. This one had big murals on the walls telling the story of Buddha and the tooth relic so we spent a lot of time reading through the whole story.
Gold elephants decorating the room.
Everything was elaborately decorated, this is the upper level of the tooth relic chamber.
This was the old courts building and now it houses a museum about Buddhism. We didn't end up going in, in part because it seemed strange to do so without shoes, but the building was beautiful.
This is a huge bee/wasp/hornet nest hanging on the side of the Palace building.
The audience hall where the Kandy kings held court. All of the wood pillars were carved and constructed in 1783!
Inside the audience hall.
Steve posing inside the hall.
This wasn't even the entire complex! There's so much more to show, but that's enough pictures for one time.
Check out the rest of our Sri Lanka travels:
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