Kandy The last royal capital, the Temple of the Tooth, a World Heritage Site

Where to stay in Kandy

Things to do from Kandy

• Culture and heritage · about 1 and a half hours, from 18:30The evening service at the Temple of the ToothThe Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, beside Kandy Lake, houses the relic that the Sinhalese kings held as their right to rule, and monks of 2 chapters perform services for it 3 times a day. The evening service runs from 18:30 to 20:00, when drinks, honey and ghee are offered to the relic in gold and silver vessels.
• Culture and heritage · 10 nights in July or August; each night's procession starts at about 19:30 and can run for more than 3 hoursThe Esala Perahera, Kandy's festival of the toothThe Perahera is the annual procession in honour of the Sacred Tooth Relic, when the relic casket is carried through Kandy on the back of the temple's tusker, with whip-crackers, fire performers, drummers, dancers and decorated elephants from the city's 4 shrines to its guardian deities. The processions grow night by night, the last 5 nights are the largest, and the festival closes with a water-cutting ceremony on the Mahaweli river at Getambe.
• Nature and wildlife · a morning or an afternoon; the gardens open from 07:30 to 18:00The Royal Botanic Gardens at PeradeniyaFormally founded in 1843, the gardens cover 147 acres beside the Mahaweli river, about 5.5 km west of Kandy, and hold more than 4,000 species of plants, among them orchids, spices, medicinal plants and palms. During the Second World War they served as the headquarters of South East Asia Command.
• Culture and heritage · 1 hour, from 17:00 (16:30 during the Perahera)An evening of Kandyan danceKandyan dance grew out of the Kohomba Kankariya, a ritual of the central hills, and its dancers were once attached to the Temple of the Tooth and its Perahera. The Ves dancer, in a headdress held sacred to the deity Kohomba, is its best-known figure.
• Nature and wildlife · a morning; the forest opens at 07:00A walk in the Udawattakele royal forestUdawattakele is a 104-hectare forest on the ridge above the Temple of the Tooth, kept as the royal pleasure garden of the Kandyan kings and closed to the public, then protected as a forest reserve from 1856. It holds 3 Buddhist forest hermitages and is known for its birds, giant lianas and small mammals.
• Culture and heritage · about half a dayThe 3 temples west of Kandy: Gadaladeniya, Lankatilaka and Embekke3 temples of the 14th century stand a few kilometres apart in the Udunuwara hills, about 12 km west of Kandy: Gadaladeniya, built in 1344 almost entirely of carved granite in a South Indian style; Lankatilaka, raised on a rock outcrop with Buddhist and Hindu shrines in a single building; and Embekke, a shrine to the god Kataragama. Lankatilaka also carries what is described as the longest Tamil inscription found in Sri Lanka.
• Adventure · a full day; the trailheads are 1 to 1 and a half hours' drive from KandyA day's trek in the Knuckles rangeThe Knuckles, or Dumbara, range north-east of Kandy is a massif of cloud forest, grassland and peaks, 9 of them above 1,200 m, and part of the Central Highlands World Heritage Site since 2010. More than 34 percent of the island's endemic trees, shrubs and herbs grow only in these forests.
• Wellness · a single session of 1 or 2 hours, or a residential retreat of several daysBuddhist meditation in and around KandyKandy is a centre of Buddhist learning: the forest above the Temple of the Tooth alone holds 3 meditation hermitages, and a society by the lake hosts discussions on Buddhism and meditation. In the tea country 17 km from the city, a lay meditation centre founded in the late 1970s takes guests on retreat.
• Culture and heritage · a guided tour of about 15 minutes, then the tea room upstairs; about 20 minutes by road from KandyThe Ceylon Tea Museum at HanthanaThe Ceylon Tea Museum fills a 4-storey tea factory built in 1925 on the Hanthana estate, just south of Kandy, in some of the first hill country to take to tea after coffee failed. The factory stood empty for more than a decade before the Sri Lanka Tea Board and the Planters' Association restored it and opened it as a museum in 2001.
• Culture and heritage · a short visit; about 20 minutes by road from KandyDegaldoruwa, the painted cave temple near KandyDegaldoruwa is a Buddhist temple cut into a rock outcrop at Amunugama, east of Kandy, begun in 1771 under King Kirti Sri Rajasinha by his younger brother, who completed it after taking the throne. It is known for its murals of the Kandyan period, painted with colours made from the bark of local trees.
• Wellness · a single treatment, or a wellness programme of 3 nights or moreAn Ayurvedic treatment arranged with your stay near KandySeveral of the hill retreats around Kandy keep their own spas, where Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of the region, is offered alongside other therapies and arranged with your stay. Treatments range from herbal oil massages to shirodhara, in which warm oil is poured slowly over the forehead.