3/3: Colombo, Sri Lanka: A Feast of the Senses

We flew nonstop overnight from Denver to London on March 1st, had a very busy five hours exploring two distinct areas of that amazing city, then flew out on another 10-hour overnight flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka, an island nation southeast of India, arriving in the early afternoon of March 3rd. I would not recommend any sane person doing two back to back overnight flights if you can possibly avoid it as the 12 hour time change is crazy, especially if you have trouble sleeping on planes! 

We chose to make Sri Lanka our first stop on our anticipated four-month Asia trip because of the large number of UNESCO World Heritage sites scattered around the country. As there weren't any stellar sights in the city, we only wanted to stay for a couple of days to recoup from the grueling flights before heading north to the religious sites that held greater appeal for us.

Arriving, it felt like we'd be dropped into an appliance mall and not an international airport as we could have had our pick of washers and dryers and fridges and stoves at every store!

Thank goodness we decided to treat ourselves and stay at the pseudo-Scottish Steuart Hotel smack dab in the center of Colombo as the location was ideal and service was excellent.

After doing what we could to freshen up after wearing the same cold-weather clothes for 48 hours and arriving in the sweltering tropics, we set out to explore the city for a few hours instead of collapsing on the spot. We ordered an Uber tuk tuk - one of three wheeled vehicles common to Asia and parts of South America - to take us to Independence Memorial Hall, a large building dedicated to Sri Lanka's 1948 independence from Britain. 

Not sure what "keeping discipline" meant but we tried!

A statue in front of the Hall away from where we'd been dropped off honored Don Stephen Senanayake, described as the Father of the Nation as he was the First Prime Minister of Independent Ceylon.

Colombo was a sea port for trade between the West and Asia going back as far as the 5th century. Three hundred years later, Arab traders settled near the port and the Portuguese arrived in 1505. They were followed by the Dutch who took over in the mid-17th century. Colombo only became a city when the British made their appearance and was declared the country's capital in 1815. 

It was an easy stroll even in the humid 90 plus weather to Viharamahadevi Park, the city's largest park formerly known as Victoria Park. We'd read that from March to early May the park's trees were supposed to be blooming but only a few scattered ones were so early in the month.

It would have been so neat to see elephants used for ceremonies spending the night in the park as they chomped on palm branches. We missed them and snake charmers but not the canoodling couples throughout the park!

Across from one end of the park was the Old City Hall, a municipal building from the British era.

A large golden, seated Buddha statue in the park faced Old City Hall.

Click on the photo below to make it larger for your smile of the day!

It certainly felt there must have been as many crows in Viharamahadevi Park as there were in Hitchcock's The Birds! They were incredibly noisy.

Not too far away was Gangaramaya Temple which was built at the end of the 19th century in the middle of a marsh so devotees could only reach it by boat. The complex included a museum, library and a collection of gifts presented by well wishers over the years. 

Before touring the temple, I needed to borrow a sarong as my legs were showing. As you may already know, no shoes could be worn in a Buddhist or Hindu temple. Only foreigners were required to pay an admission charge to the temple.

The temple's Viharaya or Image House housed many imposing Buddha statues in vibrant hues. Look at the size of the people compared to that of the Buddhas in the second photo and you'll understand why I chose the word "imposing" in relation to their size.

In the center of the temple grounds was an immaculate white statue of Samadhi Buddha shown in the Dhyana Mudra position, the posture of meditation associated with his first Enlightenment.

The forehead of the 8-ton white jade statue was decorated with white diamonds and was in a 40-ton marble and granite enclosure. 

Atavisi Hall was home to 28 statues of more Buddhas: the Gautama Buddha born in India as well as the 27 Buddhas, who, according to tradition, preceded him. Offerings had been made to the Buddhas.

The Museum occupied several halls in the complex as people donated wood and ivory carvings, valuable furniture and even extremely rare cars! In one hall, faithful walked around the Buddha statue in single file reverently depositing offerings of money in front of it.

The Relic Chamber housed sacred relics of the Buddha, his disciples and the latest addition, a sacred relic donated by a Buddhist monastery in Bangladesh.

If you look really, really closely, you can pick out at the back in the middle the jade replica of the original emerald Lord Buddha which was created by one of the most famous artists in Thailand and given to the temple.

The three items common to all Buddhist temples are a stupa, image house and a Bo Tree also called a Bodhiya. The latter was the sacred fig tree under which Buddhists believe the Buddha attained enlightenment. Because of that, the tree is always worshipped by followers who place prayer flags on its branches as they walk around it clockwise.

FYI: As I mentioned before, we came to Sri Lanka to visit many of its primary religious sites and therefore may have had our fill of seeing stupas, image houses and bo trees in the ten days that followed!

 

What Steven and I were most excited seeing at the temple was the Borobudur Replica as we'd seen the world's largest Buddhist temple in Borobudur, Indonesia, years ago. I loved looking at the gazillion Buddhas on stacked platforms almost as far as the eye could see. Seeing the replica brought us back to what seemed like yesterday!

Here's Steven on October 2nd, 2015, when we visited Borobudur! I was able to find the photo after going to the trip blogs at the top of each post to find out what year we were in Indonesia and then use the "Search" bar on the right of each post and voila! - I chose this photo. 

If I had to hazard a guess, I imagine there may well have been a thousand plus Buddhas here. The scale of the reproduction was phenomenal.

Yours truly wearing the sarong in front of the temple at the end of our first day of the trip! 

The day had been a feast of the senses a world away from what we were accustomed to at home with non stop blaring horns from tuk tuks, incessant sounds of crows, the scent of incense burning and the almost psychedelic colors and sheer volume of images in the temple. Given the almost twelve hour time change, we slept like babies that night.

Next post: Exploring More of Colombo via Tuk Tuk!

Posted on March 13th, 2020, on our first day in India this trip as we flew in to Kochi in the southern state of Kerala just hours before the Indian government closed its borders because of the coronavirus!