Day 109: Esala Perahera

By way of Tyndall luck, we'd arrived in Kandy the day before the most important, busiest night of the year in Kandy - the last night of Esala Perahera. Essentially, the Esala Perahera ("perahera" means procession or parade and can be loosely translated into common Canadiana as "watching paint dry") is a procession from the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, around the city past other temples, then back to the Temple of the Tooth. The whole celebration is to honour the tooth relic - the left canine tooth of the Buddha. On the positive side, we have landed here with a chance to see a very big deal in Sri Lanka. It has, however, made the city really busy and the traffic unbelievably congested.

Luckily, the main parts of Kandy are quite walkable. We are staying in a lovely location, up a small hill overlooking the valley where the city lies. A big part of the valley is filled with a man made lake, created by the King in 1807. He was a smart man, as it really adds a ton of character to the city, and ensures we have shade whenever we walk up and down either side of the lake.

We set out after breakfast, heading around the lake towards the temple. We did stop, of course, at the Garden Cafe to get "second breakfast" for the kids (prata and samosas). It wasn't long before we were asked to pose with a little family. In parts of Southeast Asia, people would take clandestine pictures, or fake selfies with the back camera taking pictures of us instead. Only occasionally would people ask to take our pictures. Here? It's happening all the time, and to be honest, it's pretty funny.

You'll see the girls above wearing their sarongs to cover up their legs. Luckily, they were also wearing white, which it turns out is the respectful and most fashionable colour during Perahera. We went through security (separate men's and ladies entrances - the girls were given a proper lesson on how to tie their sarongs by the security woman on their side) then proceeded towards the temple entrance. Most of the sights in Sri Lanka are either free or very nominal for Sri Lankans (or for people who look Sri Lankan for that matter), but actually fairly expensive for foreigners. We've seen this two tiered system before and we'd read review sites and message boards with loads of people complaining about it. I have zero problems with developing countries charging more for tourists - it lets the domestic residents see their own sites and after all, on a relative basis, every tourist coming to these countries is without a doubt "rich" (one little note though, could you do only one "free for locals" day per week like the Taj Mahal does so we know when the riffraff will be there? Just kidding :-)).

We had to take our shoes off and check them at a little booth before going in (Beth and Abby were not completely committed to that one!!). Then we joined the throngs. It was "hands guarding pockets, stay in single file with me at the front" mode. Most of the people seemed to be in little familial groups. We were squeezed up a staircase onto a landing, then up another staircase. Thank god it is not hot in Kandy, or we may have melted. When we got to the top, things started to get frantic and we had no idea why. This big, heavyset guy with a kind face was waving us towards him and creating a little pocket of space for us to squeeze into. He said "come quickly, they will close the temple very soon. You'll never see this again!". Not really knowing what he was talking about, we went with it.  He had one of his friends give each of us offering flowers, and we plotted through the narrow line following our new leader. Sure enough, when we got to the front of the line, we had a quick glance into an inner sanctum area that had an even smaller room on the inside, where a monk was attending a silver, gold and glass tiny looking stuppa that contained the tooth relic. It was kind of an Indiana Jones moment.

When we broke free of the crowd and took some big breaths, we thanked the man profusely. We looked back and sure enough they had closed the tooth relic area. What a nice guy, but he is not the exception here - everyone seems nice!

We explored the temple area and beyond. There was a huge room and just as Lek had described - it was full of giant ivory tusks, which she obviously had a problem with. She had even asked the head monk why they still displayed something that was illegal to buy, sell or trade... I don't think his answer was satisfactory. If you think Thailand is associated with elephants, compared to Sri Lanka it doesn't even come close. There are so many elephant images, statues, carvings and the real thing here.

We made our way back out the front gate of the main temple structure, over to the grounds. There we saw the evidence of mistreatment of the elephants in person - lots of scars on the legs from chains, many swollen contusions on the legs, ears and head, lots of scar tissue on the front legs from being poked with the end of their combo spear and hook. I know none of us have gotten our elephant whisperer designation yet, nor do we have EESP (elephant esp?) but they did not look like a happy bunch.

From a distance, we could see more elephants chained up. They were mostly doing the backwards forwards shuffle that we'd learned was their way of showing stress. Most of them had a front and the opposite back leg chained up so that they couldn't really move those two legs. Very sad.

Most of the mahouts carried the hooked spear shown here as well as a knife tucked into their waist bands. It was kind of like seeing an accident on the highway - we knew it was bad, but we couldn't look away. The girls were pretty upset.

Eventually we left the temple grounds and explored the city centre of Kandy a bit. It was the biggest night of the procession so there were offering flowers being prepared and sold almost everywhere.

Have I mentioned we are loving the food so far? Another nice lunch - this time a curry set.

We chilled out back at he hotel after lunch. I had a feeling we were in for a long night, and a little R and R was a good idea. The girls are now thoroughly addicted to the Walking Dead, but luckily the WiFi is spotty at times and we can't binge watch it.... Because that is a very slippery slope! We returned to the Garden Cafe for dinner. Abby was quite happy with her ginormous bowl of rice and curry....

...while the rest of us had Kottu. This dish is so good!

The walk around the lake was beautiful and strangely peaceful, as we knew just a kilometer away there would be hundreds of thousands of people lining up to watch the procession. I'm trying not to call it a parade because we are not parade people. It's weird - the whole family is much more into "going to see/do" rather than "sitting and watching". Movies would be the exception of course!

There were thousands of giant fruit bats flying around above the lake - I guess it's a nightly ritual. It was very cool - Abby snapped this pic...

During the day, we'd already been accosted by people trying to sell us reserved seats for the par...procession. We'd talked to one nice American family from New York who'd been the night before. They'd bargained hard from the list price of $100 per person, down to $30. Still... $120 for a family of four to watch a par...procession.... gulp. They also said that when you'd seen twenty minutes, you'd seen the whole thing, as it was pretty repetitive (they stayed for the whole thing, and as he was describing it I think I saw their teenage daughter roll her eyes.... Double gulp).

Still, going to see the par...procession was a "must do" (whatever!) - we were caught by our own internal peer pressure - we've come all this way, and we're not going to see the par....procession?

When we got to the city centre, all of the streets were blocked off and people were lined up twenty deep. We started the process of entertaining offers from the dozen or so touts trying to sell space in front of their shop, on top of their shop, on top of their friends shop.... You get the picture! We eventually followed a guy who was offering $30/person (down from $100). He took us through a circuitous route around the par...procession boundaries. We crossed a main street, then into progressively smaller and darker streets, until we were walking through a very dark street that was really a glorified alleyway. I could sense the tension behind me, and to be honest, I was questioning it a little, but I had a good idea of where we were (behind one of the par....procession streets) and there were other people (well, men) around. When we got to the sketchiest section, I saw two police officers.... I really can't say if that made me feel better or worse, what with the rampant police (albeit minor) corruption in Asia.

Our guy beckoned us to come through a swinging metal door cut out of a sheet metal wall. Umm... Hmmm... I had to go with my gut in this one. I had the girls stay at the doorway while I checked out the inner yard. It was strewn with garbage and bags of "stuff". The guy was pointing up a dodgy little metal stairway that rose about twenty steps to the top of a flat roofed building. I said "I'm going to pass buddy" but he said "there are lots of other tourists up there.... trust me!". There was something honest is his face, and to be honest we have not felt one ounce of aggression or attitude so far so..... I climbed the stairway. When I got to the top, I saw the back of what looks like a makeshift, wooden set of stands at the front of the roof of the building. The roof itself was covered in patches of water, dirt and tar. I made my way, weaving around the puddles, to the "bandstand". I climbed a couple of steps up and saw a hilarious site - there were about 80 or so mostly foreigners packed into the stands. When I say packed, it was packed!! Shoulder to shoulder, knee to back. The stands were overlooking the par....procession street, so.... I guess we were a go. It was 7:30pm and the par...procession was due to start at around 8:00pm from the nearby temple.

I collected the girls - they were extremely happy to walk up the rickety stairs (yes, I'm being extremely sarcastic). When the "attendants" (note: all professional sounding terms regarding the viewing area for this par....procession should be read using virtual double quotes) squeezed them into their seats, they seemed to settle down a bit. The calming nature of the ushers (yes, you should have added double quotes to that) really set our minds at ease. We were in the 6th row of 7. The Aussie and Mexican sitting next to Beth (he wasn't an Aussie/Mexican, there were two guys... anyway) had been sitting there since 6:30. I'm guessing the people in the front row had been there since mid afternoon. The concession stand ("!"!) was non existent, as were the lavatories. We never made it to the snack bar, perhaps it was the fact that if we did, there was a 60% chance we'd fall off the edge of the roof looking for one.

So.... We waited.... And we waited.... I give credit to Robin, she beat the 7:52 over/under time Abby had set for her to say "Can we go now" by a good 45 minutes. But honestly, by that time, the little voice in my head was also saying "Can we go now? Can we? Can we? Can we? Let's go!!!". Alas, we were committed to seeing the, and here's the superlative, "most important night of the most important festival in Kandy, in Sri Lanka, in the World". We just couldn't leave.

And we waited. It was now 9:20.....

By 9:30, I swear to you I was going to call the "usher" to talk to the "chief coordinator" to convince the "manager" to call the "par...procession manager" to hurry the f$@& up! Good god. That's when we heard what sounded like fire crackers. So we got ready for the show. The fire crackers were guys smacking the street with whips. People would throw coins on the street and they would pick them up and move on.

I won't lie. The par...procession was amazing. Sorry, I said I wouldn't lie, it was just ok. You know, if you wait for 12 hours on the Champs Élysées to watch 10 circuits and the final sprint on the final day of the Tour de France, you know you're going to see something special (I can't wait until some future third week of July!!!!), but these stands were no Champs Élysées, and this par...procession was no Tour de France. It certainly wasn't even close to as quick either.

We saw guys doing acrobatics with flaming pots - actually this guy made it look like there was a ball of fire zooming around his head, until I figured out the string was attached around his neck:

The music was kind of cool - a typically Indian sound that I kept humming on the way home.

We saw the poor elephants dressed and chained, walking the streets with one, two or three guys on their backs.

After about 40 minutes of pretty repetitive par...processioning, we were ready to pack it in. Beth and I made eye contact, nodded and that was it... For us, the..... Ok, it was a parade... A PARADE! I hate parades.... The parade was over for us. We crept down the stairs, snuck through the alleyway and found a sober Tuk Tuk driver to whisk us home. That will be the last parade of my life. I have formally put my foot down! :-)