Kandy UNESCO Heritage Day by Local Bus with a Kandyan Guide

Almost every Kandy tour puts you in a private car. This one puts you on the bus, which is how the city actually moves, and the difference is most of the point.

Sri Lankan local buses are loud, crowded, decorated, and run to a logic that is not written down anywhere. Having a guide with you turns that from an obstacle into the most interesting part of the day — you learn which bus goes where, what the conductor is shouting, why the music is that loud, and you spend the day among people going to work rather than among other visitors.

The sites are the ones that matter. The Temple of the Tooth, which holds a relic of the Buddha and is the reason Kandy is a UNESCO World Heritage site, timed if possible for a puja. The Bahirawakanda Buddha on the hill above, 27 metres of white concrete with the best view in the city. The lake, dug by the last king in 1807. And the neighbourhoods between them, which no car tour stops in.

It is a slower day than the private version and a considerably richer one, and it costs a fraction as much because the transport costs almost nothing.

Kandy was the last capital of the Sinhalese kings, holding out against the Portuguese and Dutch until the British took it in 1815, and the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic on the lake is why it matters: the relic, believed to be a tooth of the Buddha, is the most sacred object on the island and its custody once legitimised the kingship. The relic chamber opens for puja three times a day, at about 5:30, 9:30 and 18:30, when the drumming starts and the queue moves past the casket. Dress covers shoulders and knees, shoes come off at the entrance, and the Esala Perahera in July or August parades the casket on an elephant through the city for ten nights.