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Cave temples of Dambulla

Buddhism runs deep in Sri Lanka. There are more Buddhist temples on this island than anywhere that I’ve been. Sights of monks in their orange/saffron robes make them stand out from the crowd, even when there’s already a myriad of colours surrounding them. Besides the temples, on street corners and main junctions everywhere, it is not unusual either to see a shrine, sometimes almost unnoticeably small, sometimes magnificent and breathtaking, paying homage to the Buddhas sheltered by a sacred Bo tree nearby.

Day 2 of our trip continued from Sigiriya, which at one point of time in history was also a monastery site, heading towards Dambulla for the famous cave temples before travelling further south to Kandy, home to the country’s most important shrine, the Temple of the Tooth. But let’s not get too far ahead. First, we’ll take a peek at the cave temples.

Dambulla on its own, is a small dusty town. A main street lined with shops, some in relatively modern multi-storey premises, others low wooden huts, and one should not be surprised either to see incompletely constructed buildings already in use – something we noticed no matter where we went.

The cave temples are located a couple of kilometres south of centre Dambulla. It would be hard to miss, given that the Golden Temple lies at the bottom of the steps leading to the temples. The Golden Temple boasted a gigantic golden (of course) Buddha, seated cross-legged over a lion’s head (its mouth the entrance to the temple – reminiscent of the idea from Sigiriya?). We did not enter the temple itself but walked around for a quick peek while waiting for the ticket counter to the cave temples to open after the lunch hour.

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Day 252: Cheeky monkey

I am torn between writing lengthy posts of my trip in Sri Lanka and keeping these daily Project 365 entries short as usual. Perhaps it would be best that I write on the trip fully as separate stand alone travel articles, where I would have more photos to go with the entries too. Sounds like an idea?

There are quite a lot of monkeys running around at the Dambulla Cave Temple complex where Claire and I spent our second afternoon in Sri Lanka. They are constantly on the move, some even involved in play (that looks more like fighting – they don’t play nice), and a few of them constantly checking out new food sources. By that, I mean the flowers offered by the visiting pilgrims. They keep sneaking in and out of the caves, and quickly swiped fresh flowers off the table to take away for a snack. Very cheeky indeed.


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