Kandy City Guide: What to See, Where to Walk and How Long to Stay

Kandy was the last independent kingdom in Sri Lanka. The Portuguese took the coast in the sixteenth century and the Dutch took it from them in the seventeenth, but neither could hold the hills — the approaches are narrow, the forest is thick, and the Kandyan kings simply withdrew and waited them out. The kingdom did not fall until 1815, and then largely through a negotiated convention rather than a battle.

That history is the reason the town feels different from anywhere on the coast. Colombo and Galle are layered with European building; Kandy is a Sinhalese capital that happens to have some British additions. The temple, the lake, the old audience hall and the craft traditions are continuous rather than imposed.

It is also small. The centre is walkable in an afternoon, the lake circuit is 3.5 flat kilometres, and almost everything worth seeing is within a couple of kilometres of the temple. What Kandy asks for is not a long list of sights but time in a small number of them, plus at least one evening, because the town at night — the lake lit, the drumming carrying from the temple, the air finally cool — is when it makes sense.

The Sri Dalada Maligawa is the centre of the town in every sense. It holds a relic of the Buddha, possession of which was historically tied to the right to rule the island, and it is why Kandy is UNESCO-listed. The relic chamber opens for three pujas a day, at 5.30am, 9.30am and 6.30pm, and outside those windows you are visiting a beautiful building rather than a ceremony.

Around it is the rest of the royal compound: the octagonal Pattirippuwa tower from 1802, now a palm-leaf manuscript library; the Alut Maligawa with its rows of donated Buddha statues and a museum; and the Raja Tusker Museum, holding the preserved body of the elephant who carried the relic casket in the Perahera for around fifty years.

Across the road, the Kandy National Museum occupies part of the old royal palace and holds the Kandyan regalia, weapons and court objects. It is quiet, rarely busy, and worth an hour if the kingdom's history interests you at all.

Dress rules apply across the precinct: shoulders and knees covered, shoes off, and socks worth carrying because the stone gets painfully hot.

Kandy lake was dug in 1807 by Sri Wickrama Rajasinha, the last king, on what had been paddy land — a decision unpopular enough at the time that he had objecting chiefs impaled on stakes in the lake bed. It is a flat 3.5 kilometre circuit, shaded in parts, and the standard early-morning or late-afternoon walk.

The Bahirawakanda Vihara Buddha stands on the hill directly above the town: a 27-metre white statue, reached by a steep road or a stiff walk, with the best free view over Kandy and the valley. Go at sunset.

Udawattakele is the surprise. It is 103 hectares of genuine forest immediately behind the Temple of the Tooth, protected as a reserve since 1856 and before that the royal forest garden, off limits to commoners. Inside there are made paths, Kandyan-period ponds, the Senkanda cave the city may be named after, and very good birding — Layard's parakeet, hanging parrots, babblers, and giant squirrels and purple-faced langurs in the canopy. Go at dawn.

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya, six kilometres west of town, are 60 hectares inside a loop of the Mahaweli river and were laid out formally in 1821 on ground that had been a royal garden since the fourteenth century. The Cabbage Palm Avenue, planted in 1905, runs arrow-straight for a couple of hundred metres; the orchid house is genuinely good; and there is a single Javan fig whose canopy covers around 2,500 square metres of lawn. Allow two hours.

Kandy's craft tradition is still working rather than preserved. The woodcarvers, batik workshops, brass workers and gem cutters around Matale road and in the town supplied the court, and their descendants are in the same trades. Most workshops will let you watch and have a shop attached; there is never an obligation to buy, and the demonstrations are worth the stop regardless.

The Kandyan dance shows near the lake run nightly. They are staged for visitors and honest about it — an hour of the ves dance, mask forms, drumming and a fire walk. The drumming is the real article and the performers train in the same tradition that supplies the Perahera.

Rice and curry is the meal, and it is badly named in English: not a curry served with rice, but six or seven separate dishes eaten together, each cooked its own way — a tempered dhal, a coconut sambol pounded with chilli and lime, a jackfruit or green bean cooked down in coconut milk, a fish or egg curry, and papadam. A good one costs a few dollars at a local place and three times that in a hotel, and the local one is usually better.

Kottu is the other thing to eat here: godamba roti chopped on a hot plate with egg, vegetables and meat, and the rhythmic clatter of the blades is audible down the street from about six in the evening. Kandy's kottu places run late.

The market in the centre is worth walking through even if you buy nothing — the fruit section alone covers a dozen things most visitors cannot name. Buffalo curd with treacle, sold in clay pots, is the standard dessert and is exactly as good as it sounds.

For a proper sit-down, the hotels above the lake do a colonial-era high tea with a view. It is a tourist thing and it is also genuinely pleasant at five in the afternoon.

Two nights is the right answer for most people. That gives you one full day for the town — Bahirawakanda in the morning, Peradeniya in the heat of the day, the lake in the late afternoon, and the 6.30pm puja — and a second day for something outside it: Udawattakele at dawn, a village day, the Hanthana ridge, or a run north to Sigiriya.

One night works if you are passing through on the standard loop and only want the temple and the lake. Three nights is worth it if you are hiking, because the Knuckles range and the first stage of the Pekoe Trail both start from here and both need a full day each.

What to skip: Pinnawala elephant orphanage divides opinion sharply and is on most day tours by default. It holds around eighty rescued animals and the rescue work is real; it is also heavily commercialised, with bathing sessions timed for coaches. Decide in advance rather than being driven there. The gem museums are fine as demonstrations and are attached to hard-sell shops. And a day trip to Kandy from Colombo is three to four hours each way for an afternoon in town — if the temple is the point, sleep here instead.