Day 8 - Dambulla (first day)

16.10.2024

Day 8

After breakfast at Radisson Kandy, we headed for our next destination Dambulla, a fairly large city situated 72 kms north of Kandy.

The drive was uneventful, the roads good except few patches in some sections on the way. The route very much resembles Kerala - the vegetation and houses on either side of the road made us feel we are travelling through Kerala! Sri Lanka and Kerala have so much in common.

A few kms before Dambulla is Synthite Lanka (Pvt) Ltd, a subsidiary of the world renowned value-added spice company Synthite Industries (Pvt.) Ltd based in Kochi, India. We had a brief stop at their factory where they source pepper, clove, cinnamon etc for their main unit in Kochi. We were welcomed by Mr. Ryan, who leads the team and taken on a tour of their factory. Like Kerala, Sri Lanka is a major producer of spices.

We checked in at Jetwing Lake a beautiful property in Dambulla, where we have booked for next two nights, but not before Google map giving us some anxious moments.

Google sent us through this road - after some distance we knew it was wrong, but the five adventurous young men decided to risk it….finally we reached the back of the hotel…the staff there gave us directions to reach the front through another road.

After unpacking and refreshing, we headed for Sigiriya rock formation a UNESCO world heritage site, located about 20 kms from our hotel. 

Sigiriya is a massive column of granite approximately 590 ft high. Apparently, it was the capital and royal palace of ancient King Kashyapa AD 477-495, and was abandoned after his death. The gardens of Sigiriya are among the oldest landscaped gardens in the world.

By the time we reached the place, it was close to sunset and since visitors entry was already closed, we took solace by taking photos of the gigantic rock in the golden hour.

We returned to the hotel and had an excellent buffet dinner on the beautiful poolside lawns. The weather was perfect and we enjoyed the dinner spread thoroughly, with the moon shining over us.

End of day eight.