Following in the footsteps of elephants on a journey through wild eastern Sri Lanka
Heading south east from the tea plantations of Sri Lanka’s highlands, vast tracts of jungle flow towards the beach through less-visited national parks like Gal Oya. Travellers can view the wilderness from a train, take a tuk-tuk safari or hike in the footsteps of elephants with the indigenous Vedda people.
Celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, the Kandy to Ella railway line is famed for being one of the most scenic train journeys in the world.
Photograph by Simon Urwin
ByLorna Parkes
Photographs bySimon Urwin
August 20, 2024
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
We move as a tight-knit herd. “It’s like a sauna in here,” whispers my guide Kapi, mopping his brow and wafting air up his white polo shirt. A baby’s foot digs into my ribs as we lurch forward, carried by a sea of people trying to get closer to a casket so luminously golden it looks like it’s glowing. Tray after tray of perfumed white jasmine, gardenia and lotus flowers are held aloft and pushed forward by human chains of devotees.
All this for a tooth — but not just any tooth. The casket holds a rare relic of the Buddha, said to have been smuggled out of southern India in the locks of a princess’s hair in the 4th century CE. It eventually found its way here to the highland kingdom of Kandy in central Sri Lanka. Kandy fell to the British in 1815 during colonial rule but reverence for the Temple of the Sacred Tooth that houses the casket continued to grow. Three times a day, hundreds of pilgrims and curious travellers now come for this pooja ceremony — when the doors to the shrine are opened — played out to booming thammattama drums and shrill horanawa clarinets. It’s one of the world’s holiest Buddhist sites — and a baptism of fire for my trip into the east of Sri Lanka.
One of the world’s holiest Buddhist sites, the Temple of Tooth’s pooja ceremony is visited by hundreds of pilgrims and travellers every day.
Photograph by Simon Urwin