Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic

The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic stands on the northern shore of the lake in the middle of Kandy, inside the walls of what was once the royal palace of the last kingdom on the island. Sri Lankans call it the Dalada Maligawa, which translates as something closer to the palace of the tooth relic than the temple of it, and the difference in wording is not accidental. The building was raised to house a relic that was treated as a resident of the kingdom rather than an exhibit in it, and it is still run on that understanding today.

This is the most important Buddhist site in Sri Lanka. It is also a working shrine, attended daily by monks of the two chapters that have shared its care for centuries, visited every day by Sri Lankan families who have come to make an offering rather than to look at a monument. Visitors from abroad are welcomed into it, warmly and without fuss, and the great majority have a good visit. The ones who do not are almost always the ones who arrived with the wrong idea of what they were coming to see.

So this page tries to set that straight: what the relic means to the country, what you will and will not see, why the hour you choose matters more here than anywhere else on the island, what to wear, and how the complex is laid out. The drive up to Kandy and the geography of its hotels belong to the route pages.

What the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic is

The short version: a shrine within a former royal palace complex, holding a tooth relic of the Buddha, which Sri Lankan Buddhists venerate as the most significant object in the country. The complex forms part of the Sacred City of Kandy, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, and it is the focus of the island's largest annual religious procession.

That description is accurate and tells you almost nothing about why it matters. For that you need the relationship between the relic and the state, which is genuinely unusual and which shapes everything about how the temple is run.

An object of state as well as of faith

For most of the recorded history of the island, whoever held the tooth relic held the right to rule. That is not a poetic way of putting it. Sri Lankan kings did not merely possess the relic as a treasure; possession was understood as the legitimising condition of kingship, and rival claimants went to considerable lengths to take it. When the capital moved, the relic moved with it, and a new shrine was built to receive it. Its recorded travels run through the successive seats of Sinhalese power — Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, and then the shifting capitals of the later medieval period — before it came to rest at Kandy, the last kingdom to hold out in the hills after the coastal lowlands had fallen to European powers.

The relationship did not end with the monarchy. The Diyawadana Nilame, the lay custodian of the temple, remains a figure of national standing, and the temple's relationship with the government of the day is close, formal and occasionally political. Presidents attend. The relic features in the ceremonial life of the republic. When Sri Lanka has faced disaster — war, tsunami, epidemic — rituals have been performed at the Maligawa on the country's behalf, and reported on the national news as such.

This is the piece of context most visitors lack, and it explains things that otherwise look excessive. The security at the entrance, the seriousness of the staff, the weight of feeling in the queue on a busy evening: none of it is theatre for tourists.

What is believed, and by whom

Sri Lankan Buddhists believe the relic to be a tooth of the Buddha, recovered from his funeral pyre and brought to the island in the fourth century by a princess who is said to have concealed it in her hair. That is the tradition as it is told here, recorded in the chronicles and in the paintings on the walls of the temple's newer shrine hall, and it is held with complete conviction by millions of people.

Whether the object is what tradition says it is has been argued over by outsiders for centuries, and that argument is not one to bring through the gate. What matters for a visitor is simpler: this is an object of the deepest veneration to the people around you, many of whom have travelled a long way and saved for the journey. Extending the same courtesy costs nothing and is the basis on which visitors are made welcome.

Who runs it

The daily services are conducted by monks of the Malwatte and Asgiriya chapters, the two great monastic establishments of Kandy, with lay administration under the Diyawadana Nilame. The practical consequence is that the temple sets its own arrangements — hours, entry procedures, which parts of the complex are open, how the queue is managed — and those can change at short notice for reasons that will not be explained to you. Confirm current opening and ticketing locally on the day rather than relying on anything you read in advance, including this page.

The relic is not on display

This is the single most important thing to understand before you go, and it is the source of nearly every disappointed account of a visit to Kandy.

You will not see the tooth. Nobody does. The relic is kept within a series of caskets, one inside the next, in a chamber on the upper floor of the inner shrine. During puja the doors of that chamber are opened and worshippers file past the doorway. What is visible from the passage, for a few seconds as you pass, is the chamber itself — lamps, flowers, attendants, and the outermost casket, a gilded stupa-shaped vessel standing under a canopy. The relic is inside it, unseen.

Very occasionally, at intervals of many years and by decision of the temple and the state together, an exposition is held at which the public may approach more closely. These are enormous national events, announced well in advance, and not something to plan a holiday around because there is no schedule to plan against. Assume your visit is an ordinary one.

So what does a visit consist of? You arrive, pass a security check, leave your shoes, and walk into a very old complex of dark timber, carved stone and painted ceilings. If you have timed it for puja you hear the drums and horns begin, join a queue that moves up a narrow stair, and pass the open doorway of the shrine among people who are praying, many carrying lotus buds and jasmine. You come back down, walk through the newer shrine hall with its ranks of donated Buddha images, look at the museums if you have the interest, and come out onto the open ground in front having found it took rather more out of you than you expected.

What it is not is a viewing. If you go expecting to look at a tooth in a case, you will feel cheated by something that has cheated nobody. If you go understanding that the point is to be present at a devotion, and that the object at its centre is deliberately hidden, it is one of the more affecting hours available to a traveller in Sri Lanka.

Puja, and why timing your visit around it changes everything

The temple keeps a daily cycle of offerings, and the difference between arriving during one and arriving between them is the difference between two entirely different places.

What happens

A puja is an offering ceremony. It is announced by the temple's drummers and horn players, who form up in the pillared hall beside the shrine and play — an insistent, layered pattern of drums and reed pipes that carries out across the lake and is one of the great sounds of Sri Lanka. Under that sound, the doors of the relic chamber are opened, offerings of food and flowers are made, and the worshippers who have been waiting are let up the stairs in a slow, dense, patient stream to pass the doorway.

The atmosphere is not solemn in a European sense. It is busy, crowded, warm and full of children, with a strong smell of jasmine and coconut oil lamps. The drumming is loud. The queue presses. Then you are past, and it is quiet again.

Outside puja hours the shrine doors are closed and the building is calm and half-empty. You can walk the complex and visit the museums without pressure, which has its own value — but the chamber is shut.

Which one to choose

Offerings are customarily made three times a day: before dawn, in the middle of the morning, and in the early evening. The times usually given locally are around half past five in the morning, half past nine, and half past six in the evening. Treat those as indicative rather than fixed — they shift on Poya days and during the procession season, they can change for other reasons, and the temple is under no obligation to publish anything. Ask at your accommodation the day before, or have your driver telephone, and build in a margin. Arriving twenty minutes early costs you nothing; arriving ten minutes late costs you the visit.

• The evening puja is the one most visitors choose and the busiest by a wide margin. It is also the most atmospheric: the lamps lit, the lake dark, the courtyards full, the drums carrying across the water. If you only have one shot, take this one and accept the crowd.
• The morning puja is the quietest and, for many people, the better experience. The building is cool, the light comes low through the verandahs, the crowd is mostly local and mostly regular, and there is room to stand. Getting up for it is the price, and it is a fair one.
• The mid-morning puja sits in between and often coincides with the arrival of tour groups, which makes it the least distinctive of the three. It is the convenient option for anyone passing through Kandy in a single day rather than staying the night.

One weekly ritual is worth knowing about. On Wednesdays the relic is traditionally bathed in scented water prepared with herbs and flowers, and that water is afterwards distributed to worshippers as a blessing. It is a significant day at the temple and correspondingly busier. Nothing additional is on view, but the feeling in the building is different.

Dress and conduct, which is a matter of respect

Every guidebook lists this as a set of rules. It is better understood as the price of being welcomed into somebody else's holiest place, and it is a low price.

Shoulders and knees covered, for men as much as for women. This means no shorts, no vests, no cropped tops, no strappy sundresses. A shirt with sleeves and long trousers or a long skirt is the safe formula. Thin lightweight fabric is fine — this is about coverage, not modesty theatre — and Kandy is cool enough in the evening that you will not suffer for it. Shawls and wraps can be had from stalls near the entrance if you have misjudged, but relying on that is a poor plan on a busy evening.

White is the customary colour for Sri Lankan worshippers, and on Poya days most of the people around you will be dressed in it head to foot. Visitors are not expected to wear white, but plain, muted clothing sits better in that crowd than something loud.

Shoes come off before you enter, and there is a place to leave them. So do hats. The floors are stone and timber and worn smooth by a very large number of bare feet; in the middle of the day the open courtyards can be hot underfoot, and a pair of socks in a pocket is a small kindness to yourself. Keep them plain if you use them.

Never turn your back on a Buddha image for a photograph. This is the mistake that causes real trouble, not mild disapproval, and it is worth saying plainly because the pose is so instinctive to people who take photographs. Standing or sitting with your back to an image, and particularly grinning at a camera while doing it, reads here as a deliberate insult. Visitors have been detained and deported over versions of this. If you want a photograph near an image, stand beside it and face the same way.

Beyond that, the ordinary courtesies of a full building. Keep your voice down. Do not push in the queue, and do not stop dead in it in front of the chamber — the people behind you have often come a long way for their few seconds. Do not point the sole of your foot at an image or a monk when sitting; tuck your feet behind you, as everybody else will be doing. Do not touch monks. Do not smoke anywhere in the complex, and keep public displays of affection for elsewhere. Tattoos of the Buddha are a serious matter in Sri Lanka and are best kept covered, here above all.

None of this needs to be performed anxiously. Sri Lankan temples are not hushed, and children run about in them. Dress properly, take your shoes off, keep your back away from the images and follow the person in front of you, and you will be entirely fine.

The building and the complex

What is called the Temple of the Tooth is really a walled precinct containing several buildings of different ages, and knowing roughly what you are looking at turns a walk-through into a visit.

The moat and the approach

The complex sits behind a moat, on the site of the old royal palace, with the lake on one side and the hills rising behind. You cross the water on the way in and pass through a security check — bags are searched, large ones are usually not allowed in at all, and men and women are screened separately, so take as little as possible with you. From there the route runs under an arched passage into the courtyards, and the noise of the town drops away at once.

Along the lake side of the precinct runs a low white parapet pierced with small openings, made to hold oil lamps. On festival nights they are lit, and the whole waterfront edge of the temple turns into a line of flames reflected in the lake. If your visit falls on such a night, walk the lake road afterwards rather than getting straight into a car.

The Octagon

The octagonal tower on the corner of the complex is the Pattirippuwa, the single most recognisable piece of the building. It was built for the last king of Kandy as a place from which he could show himself to the people gathered below, and it now holds the temple's library of palm-leaf manuscripts. The view of it from the lake road in the early evening, floodlit against the dark hill, is the classic image of the town.

The drummers' hall and the inner shrine

The heart of the complex is a two-storeyed shrine standing within a courtyard, with a pillared hall alongside it where the drummers and horn players form up. The ground floor is dark, carved, and heavy with the smell of oil lamps and flowers. The relic chamber is above, reached by a stair that is narrow enough to become the pinch point of the whole visit when the building is full.

Over the shrine, a gilded canopy was added in recent decades, paid for by donation, and it catches every scrap of light in the courtyard. Look up as well as ahead: the painted timber ceilings, the ivory-inlaid doors and the carved stonework at the thresholds are as fine as anything on the island, and almost everybody walks under them without raising their eyes because the queue is moving.

The temple was attacked with a truck bomb in 1998, during the civil war, which damaged the façade and part of the roof. It was repaired, and the work was done carefully. The event is part of the building's history and is remembered here, but it is not what the place is about, and it is not the reason for the security check so much as one item in a long list of reasons.

The newer shrine hall

Attached to the older buildings is a large modern hall, generally known as the Alut Maligawa, built to hold the crowds the old courtyards could not. Inside is a big seated Buddha figure and rank upon rank of images donated by Buddhist communities in other countries, which makes it an unexpectedly good lesson in how differently the same figure is rendered across Asia. Around the walls runs a painted sequence telling the story of the relic's journey to the island. It is worth twenty unhurried minutes after the crush at the shrine has passed.

The museums

Several museums sit within or immediately beside the complex, and most visitors skip all of them, which is a pity on a hot afternoon.

• The relic museum, upstairs in the newer hall, displays offerings made to the relic over the centuries and material relating to the temple's history, including the 1998 attack and the restoration that followed.
• The world Buddhism museum, in a colonial-era building within the precinct, works country by country through the spread of Buddhism across Asia — old-fashioned in presentation and genuinely informative.
• The tusker museum houses the preserved remains of Raja, the elephant who carried the relic casket in the procession for decades and was declared a national treasure. Sri Lankans of a certain age speak about that animal with real affection.
• The national museum of Kandy occupies part of the old palace alongside, with the material culture of the Kandyan kingdom — regalia, weapons, jewellery, court dress.

Which of these are open, and whether they are covered by the temple ticket or charged separately, varies. Ask at the entrance rather than assuming.

The Esala Perahera and visiting in that season

Once a year, over ten nights in the July to August period, Kandy holds the Esala Perahera, and it is the largest and most spectacular religious procession in Sri Lanka. Caparisoned elephants, whip-crackers clearing the road ahead, fire-dancers, drummers, dancers of the Kandyan tradition in their silver headdresses, and at the centre of it the temple's own tusker carrying a casket under a canopy. The processions grow in size and length across the ten nights and end with the greatest of them.

One point of respect and accuracy: the relic itself is not paraded. A replica casket is carried. This is well known in Sri Lanka and less well known among visitors, who sometimes describe having seen the tooth relic go by. They have seen the honour paid to it, which is not a smaller thing.

If your trip falls in that season, the practical effects are large. The town fills completely and accommodation near the lake is booked far ahead. Roads around the temple close in the evenings, so a car will set you down further out than usual and you will walk. Seating along the route is arranged in advance through hotels and agents, and standing space is claimed hours before anything begins. Ordinary visiting arrangements change during the season.

Should you go then? If you want the procession, yes, and plan for it properly rather than arriving hopefully. If you want a quiet visit to the shrine itself, this is the wrong fortnight of the year and either side of it is much easier. The temple is at its calmest in the periods well away from both the Perahera and the monthly full moon.

Photography, honestly

The honest answer is that photography is broadly tolerated in the courtyards and the outer halls, restricted around the shrine, and governed less by a published rule than by the judgement of the people working there on the day.

Signage marks the areas where cameras are not to be used, and it should be taken at face value. Beyond the signs, a few principles will keep you out of trouble and, more to the point, keep you from being the person everybody in the queue is quietly annoyed with.

• Do not photograph inside the relic chamber or stop in the queue to try. The passage is narrow and moving, people are praying, and this is the moment they came for.
• Never with your back to a Buddha image. Repeated here because it is the one that gets people into genuine difficulty.
• Do not photograph people at prayer from close range, and particularly not children. A family making an offering is not a scene.
• Ask before photographing monks. Some are happy to be photographed and some are not, and posing with one is a different request again.
• Turn the flash off. Wherever you are, whatever you are photographing.
• Drones are not appropriate anywhere over the complex, and airspace over the sacred precinct is a serious matter.

The exterior is another question entirely, and a happier one. The temple seen from across the lake, floodlit after dark, with the water still and the Octagon lit against the hill, is the photograph of Kandy, and it can be taken at leisure from the public road with nobody minding at all.

How long to allow

Allow one to two hours. That is the realistic figure for a good visit and it breaks down roughly as follows: twenty minutes to arrive, get through security and leave your shoes; thirty to forty-five minutes around the puja itself, most of it queueing; twenty minutes or more in the newer shrine hall and the courtyards afterwards; and whatever you choose to give the museums, which can add an hour on its own.

Half an hour is possible and is what a great many people on a day trip actually spend, but it produces a visit consisting almost entirely of a queue. The two-hour version — arriving before the drums start, walking the courtyards first, then sitting somewhere quiet afterwards — is a different afternoon altogether. The one thing that will not compress is the queue at the chamber during a busy evening puja, so build your timing around being early for it.

What else is worth the day in and around Kandy

The temple does not fill a day, and Kandy is a natural base rather than a single stop. Three places nearby are worth building a plan around, and each has a specific piece of timing attached to it.

Pinnawala

The elephant orphanage at Pinnawala is a state-run home for orphaned and injured elephants, and it sits directly on the Colombo–Kandy road, which is why so many people stop there on the way up rather than making a separate trip. Allow about two hours. The part worth seeing is the river bathing, when the herd is walked down to the water — late morning and mid-afternoon. Outside those windows there is considerably less to see and the visit can feel thin. If you are coming up from Colombo or the airport, ask your driver to time the run so that you arrive for a bathing session; it costs nothing but planning.

Ambuluwawa Tower

Near Gampola, south-west of Kandy, a narrow spiral tower stands on a hilltop and is climbed for a full circle of view over the central hills. Allow a couple of hours including the drive. It is a genuinely odd structure and the view is excellent, but the last section is not for anyone uneasy with heights: the staircase narrows to little more than a handrail near the top and carries traffic in both directions, which means passing people on it. Go early, before a queue makes that worse, and be relaxed about turning back partway, which many people sensibly do.

The Knuckles Range

North-east of Kandy the Knuckles rise into cloud forest, grassland and villages, and the range makes its own weather. Give it a full day. Serious walking is available, but the Riverston side gives you the landscape without a demanding hike, and the drive itself is the point: narrow, high, frequently in cloud. It is not a road to hurry and not one to be on after dark. Beyond those three, the temple's own museums and the market streets west of the water will absorb any spare afternoon in the town.

The lake, and the walk around it

The temple and the lake are a single composition, and the walk around the water is the best thing to do immediately after a visit — particularly after an evening puja, when the alternative is getting into a car while the drums are still in your head.

It takes about an hour at an unhurried pace. The northern shore, in front of the temple, is the busy side, with the lamp-pierced parapet and the traffic. Turn away from it and within a few minutes the road quietens: fewer vehicles, water monitors sliding off the bank, pelicans and cormorants on the island in the middle, egrets standing in the shallows, and the trees closing in overhead. From the far side the composition assembles itself — temple, palace roofs, the Octagon, the hill behind, the white Buddha figure on the western ridge above the town — and you understand the geography of Kandy in a way no map delivers.

Practical notes. There is no continuous pavement the whole way; parts of the circuit are shared with moving traffic and it is worth walking facing it. Late at night the quieter sections are poorly lit and less pleasant for anyone walking alone, and macaques work the lakeside trees near the temple with some skill, so keep bags closed and food out of sight. If an hour is more than you want, the stretch along the southern shore and back takes twenty minutes and gives you the best of the view.

Accessibility

A straight answer is more useful than an encouraging one. Parts of the complex are manageable for visitors with limited mobility and one important part is not.

The approach, the outer courtyards and the ground level of the complex are largely flat, and a wheelchair user with a companion can get into the precinct and around a good deal of it, though surfaces are uneven in places and thresholds are stepped in the older sections. The newer shrine hall is more straightforward than the old courtyards.

The relic chamber is on the upper floor, reached by a stair that is narrow, steep in places, and packed solid during puja with people moving in one direction only. There is no lift for public use, and there is no realistic way to be carried up in a crowd of that density. Anyone who cannot manage stairs should plan on not reaching the chamber, and should know that in advance rather than discovering it at the bottom of the queue.

Other points worth weighing. Shoes must be removed, so anyone who relies on supportive footwear for balance will be walking on smooth, sometimes slippery stone in bare feet or socks. Crowds during evening puja are dense and slow-moving, seating in the complex is limited, and the drumming is loud in a way that can be genuinely overwhelming — worth knowing if you are bringing a child or an adult who finds noise hard.

The good news is that a visit outside puja hours removes most of these difficulties at once. The building is quiet, the courtyards are open, there is room to move slowly and sit down, and the museums are calm. You lose the ceremony and gain the building. For some visitors that is the better trade, and it is a legitimate way to see the place rather than a consolation prize.

Crowds, and how to avoid the worst of them

The temple is busy. It is busy because it is the most important shrine in a Buddhist country of some twenty-odd million people, not because of tourism, and no amount of clever scheduling will give you a private visit. What you can do is avoid the specific combinations that make it hardest.

• Take the early morning puja if you possibly can. It is the quietest of the three by a clear margin and the most rewarding for anyone who wants to feel the building rather than negotiate it.
• Expect the evening puja to be full, and arrive well before it starts rather than as it starts. The difference between being in the courtyard when the drums begin and joining the back of a queue that has already formed is substantial.
• Understand what a full moon day does. Poya fills the temple with worshippers in white carrying offerings. It is a wonderful day to be there and a slow one, and not the day for a tight schedule; the route pages cover how Poya affects the town more broadly.
• Weekends and school holidays bring Sri Lankan family visits in numbers, and the Perahera fortnight is the busiest period of the year in Kandy by an enormous margin. Mid-morning attracts coach groups, which arrive in clusters.

One further tactic, and a good one: go twice. Visit in the middle of the day when the shrine is closed, walk the complex properly and look at the museums with nobody pressing behind you, then come back for a puja and give your whole attention to the ceremony. Confirm at the entrance whether re-entry is possible before counting on it.

Visiting as a non-Buddhist

This is the question a great many readers actually have and are slightly embarrassed to ask: is it appropriate for me, as somebody who is not Buddhist, to go inside at all?

Yes. Unambiguously. Non-Buddhists and non-Sri Lankans are welcomed at the Dalada Maligawa, and they always have been. Foreign visitors are a normal and expected part of the daily flow, there are provisions for them, and nobody in the building will regard your presence as intrusion provided you are dressed properly and behave with ordinary courtesy. Sri Lankan Buddhism is not an exclusionary tradition, temples are not closed to outsiders, and the idea that a shrine is only for believers is a foreign import here.

What is asked of you is participation in the form rather than the belief. You are not expected to pray, to make an offering, or to pretend to a faith you do not hold. You are expected to remove your shoes, cover your shoulders and knees, move quietly, keep your back away from the images, and treat what is happening as serious because it is serious to the people doing it. That is the entire contract.

If you would like to do something rather than only watch, buying lotus buds or jasmine from the stalls outside and laying them on the offering tables is acceptable for a visitor and is not a claim to belief; it is closer to bringing flowers to a house. Copy what the person in front of you does. Children are welcome too, and Sri Lankan temples are full of them, though a child who will find a loud, crowded, barefoot hour difficult is better brought at a quieter time.

Two practical notes. You may be approached outside by people offering to guide you; some are licensed and genuinely good, and a good guide adds a great deal because so much of what you are looking at is unexplained on site. Agree clearly in advance what is being offered and how it will be settled. And you may be offered a blessing or a thread tied at the wrist inside the complex; accepting is courteous, and it is normal to make a small offering if you do.

Getting there

Briefly, because the route pages cover this properly. Kandy is around a hundred and fifteen kilometres from Colombo and the drive takes about three and a half hours, because the road climbs the whole way and spends its last stretch winding through the Kadugannawa pass behind whatever lorry sets the pace. Leaving later in the day rarely makes up the difference. From the north, coming down from the Cultural Triangle, the roads are flatter and quicker; from the tea country to the south they are slower still.

• Colombo to Kandy — 115 km, about 210 minutes.
• Bandaranaike International Airport to Kandy — 120 km, about 195 minutes.
• Dambulla to Kandy — 72 km, about 105 minutes.
• Sigiriya to Kandy — 90 km, about 135 minutes.
• Nuwara Eliya to Kandy — 75 km, about 150 minutes.
• Ella to Kandy — 140 km, about 240 minutes.

Within Kandy, the streets on the lake side are narrow and one-way in places, so a driver will usually suggest meeting on a main road rather than at a doorway — and around the temple at puja time, further out again. If you are going on into the hills afterwards, a car with reasonable ground clearance is worth having. Each route page covers the road, the timing and how transfers are usually arranged; if you already know what you need, you can go straight to booking a car, and the other destination guides cover the rest of the island.

Where people stay

Broadly, three choices. In the town around the lake, which puts you within walking distance of the temple and lets you take an evening puja and a morning one without arranging transport twice, at the cost of noise and traffic. On the slopes above the town, where most of the view hotels sit — cooler, quieter, and a drive down and back up a winding road every time you go into the centre. Or out towards Peradeniya and the Colombo road, which suits anyone treating Kandy as a stop rather than a base. During the Perahera all three fill months ahead. The route pages set out this geography properly.

A sensible shape for a visit

If you take one thing from this page, take this.

1. Stay the night in Kandy. A day trip that arrives at mid-morning and leaves at lunchtime gets the least interesting version of the temple.
2. Confirm the puja times locally the day before, and plan to be at the entrance well before the one you have chosen.
3. Dress for it before you leave your room, rather than buying a wrap at the gate in a hurry.
4. Walk the complex first, while it is quiet, and look up at the ceilings and the doorways.
5. Join the puja knowing you will not see the relic, and give your attention to the room rather than to the doorway.
6. Walk the lake afterwards instead of getting straight into a car.
7. Give the second day to Pinnawala on the way in or out, or to Ambuluwawa, or to the Knuckles if you have a full day and like a mountain road.

The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic is not a spectacle and it does not try to be one. It is a small, dark, crowded, extraordinarily old set of rooms in which something is being done that has been done every day for a very long time, and which a whole country regards as the centre of itself. Arrive at the wrong hour expecting a museum and you will wonder what the fuss is about. Arrive as the drums start, with your shoes in a rack and your shoulders covered, and stand in a queue of families holding lotus flowers, and you will understand it without anybody having to explain.