The last royal capital · UNESCO World Heritage
Kandy
Home of the Sacred Tooth Relic and the biggest festival in Asia.
Kandy held out against three colonial powers until 1815 and still feels like a capital. The Temple of the Tooth sits on the lake, drummers play at every evening puja, and in July or August the Esala Perahera brings 100 elephants and thousands of dancers through the streets.
What we do here
- Evening puja at the Temple of the Tooth
- Peradeniya gardens and the giant Javan fig
- Traditional Kandyan dance and fire-walking show
- Knuckles Range day hike
Worth knowing
- UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988
- The Esala Perahera runs for ten nights around the July or August full moon
- Peradeniya Royal Botanic Gardens covers 59 hectares and has 4,000 plant species
- Kandy sits at about 500 metres, so evenings are noticeably cooler than the coast
