After the early morning climb to the top of Pidurangula rock, we then headed on to Kandy in our Jeep - we had decided to keep our lovely driver for another 2 days and it was great to be in a jeep rather than an airconditioned minivan. Although it was a bit tight with all our luggage too. We stopped at a spice garden on the way and Kim, Louis and Dan had a 10-minute massage to sample the ayurvedic oils obviously in the hope that we would spend lots of money buying their products, but they were very expensive.

We arrived at our homestay late afternoon and our lovely host gave us a lift in to town so we could get some lunch. He then picked us up at 3.00pm and took us up to the view point where we could see the whole city and the scenic Kandy lake below us. On reflection, we should have gone to the botanical gardens 5km outside of town and we have since heard wonderful reports, so disappointed that we didn't go even just for a couple of hours.

Kandy is famous for the temple of the sacred tooth relic which houses a tooth of the Buddha. However, as you don't actually get to see the tooth and the temple can get extremely crowded, we decided to give it a miss.

Later that afternoon we watched some traditional Kandyan dance performers which concluded outside with fire eating and fire walking which was quite impressive. We decided we would go for a drink and headed to the Queens Hotel, a lovely colonial building, for cocktails. After placing our order, we were politely told that as it was full moon and therefore a religious holiday, no alcohol is served - so we had tea! As we had had a late and big lunch, none of us were very hungry so we decided to buy snacks and go back to our homestay and drink our bottle of gin we had bought in Sigiriya. Kandy was a stop over as we had hoped to get the famous train to the hill town of Ella, but unfortunately this was not to be. However, it was a nice City and we could have done with a full day to explore rather than a few hours - next time…….