We’ve just had a couple of mostly sweat-free days in Kandy, or at least the sort of sweat that accompanies great physical exertion. We have however, been subjected to relentless economic tourism. I guess there’s a price to pay for standing still in an airconditioned room when the alternative can be rather unpleasant. It’s been a fairly frugal trip up to now with most things already paid for apart from the very palatable Lion Lager. This drop has figured prominently during lunch breaks and in hotel bars post climbing up, over or on various rocks and ruins in humid heat. But a trip to a wood carving establishment (three masks and a bowl) a batik or “batiq” boutique as the locals call it (a t-shirt), a gemstone and jewellery fashioning business (cats eye earings and a sapphire pendant) and a tea factory (one packet of tea) has seen the credit card, which has had a rather relaxed holiday to this point, kicked most of the way up Lion Rock.
All of the major thouroufares in Kandy are festooned with courful stripy flags dominated by the colours red, blue and yellow. What does that remind you of? I figured either the Kandy-Ass Fudge Packers are playing soon or the Romanian Ambassador is in town. Turns out it’s the Buddhist flag and that religious festival I previously mentioned is still on. That explains the crowds of people camped on the footpath under miles of canopies which lead straight to the temple where you can gaze at a box which is supposed to have one of Buddha’s teeth in it.
It’s not easy to get into all of these Buddhist things for Buddhist people so visiting a temple complex (another one) with a heaving mass of Sri Lankan humanity, many of whom are determined to get as close as possible to that tooth, isn’t front of mind. What did attract my attention, for a couple of reasons, was the temple’s massed drumming ensemble. They could really play and they were really loud. It was John Bonham loud. It was blast your ear wax loud.
Loud drums it seems, are a part of most if not all religious and cultural performances. We watched a dance troupe comprising 11 men and three women. The men bashed drums as well as blow into conch shells, play shrieking bugle type things and performed multiple back flips, forward flips and no-hands flips across the stage and managed to pull up before flipping through windows within about half a metre of the end of the stage at both ends. The ground was three floors down. Then some of them went downstairs and impersonated dragons with mouthfuls of kerosene and other firy tricks before walking across flaming coals. Not bad all up for a bunch of male dancers, if you get my drift. The three women confined themselves to traditional dance which mostly involved waving their arms.