Alone on the road

Traveling alone is not something I would recommend. Aside from the fact that it's much harder to get things done, it's just about the loneliest thing I've done.
But it does have its advantages.

I left the cricket early mostly because it was getting a bit beery and drunken Indians are just tragic (and annoying). Outside I actually had to side step the rickshaws to avoid getting run over in their desperation to catch me.
"Junkies" a guy told me, and helped me find a decent driver. It was true as well, it's sad to see them all shouting, whistling at me, clawing at me and blocking my way in desperation. If I got in their rickshaws though they would have tried to sell me about 15 different other things and charged me about 7 times the amount. Helpless situation.

I had heard some tourists talking about "Negombo" so I decided to head there. Didn't get any sleep because of the Sri Lankan party/ jamming session going on in the lobby. Next morning I took one look at Negombo, decided I didn't like it, and left. I couldn't do that if I was with others.

I headed up the hill to Kandy. Kandy I would say is a classier version of Pokhara in Nepal. It's the hill capital of Sri Lanka and it had a lake and a massive Buddha statue on a hill.

I rounded the lake, which had huge bats flying around during the day, and got caught by an old Buddhist man. He led me with his walking stick into his Buddhist temple/ academy. In there I met the High Priest of the Temple of the Sacred Tooth (that's very important by the way, I'll come to it in a minute) He's very old- around 90 I was told, I was given a blessing or two and asked to give him a donation for medicine. I gave him a small donation. He said that was alright since I'm just a student (alright?? that was a gift!! (blessings cost money in this part of the world))
But this monk had been taking care of the Tooth Temple a couple of years back, when the temple was attacked in a bomb blast. He still had the burns from the attack which he showed me.

The "Tooth" of the Tooth Temple (which I visited next) belonged to Lord Buddha. So fittingly it's incredibly sacred to Buddhists and Hindus. I'll have to tell my monks I was so close to a piece of their Lord. The tooth has been stolen, and fought over for centuries (and was once owned by the British). I realised as I walked around, unknown to all the worshippers, I was actually quite familiar with most of it.

In the evening I saw the Kandyan dancing and some fire walking and fire eating. Wasn't so impressed with the fire things. Far more impressive and far more tragic were the fire eaters at Goa, who were basically taking mouthfuls of petrol and spitting it out into a flame, getting dangerously drunk in the process. These guys were far more professional.

Next day I decided I had seen most of Kandy, so I headed to Dambulla which is famous for its "cave temples" (a world heritage site). They were a let down.

Luckily, Dambulla was right next to "Sigirya" which was not a let down. It's a gigantic rock in the middle of a forest. I didn't have enough money to buy the ticket so I had to blag my way in for less, but climbing the rock was something incredible. No wonder the ancients chose it to be a temple. I've never seen anything like it.
The legend goes that the rocks are made from animals which turned to stone, hence things like "cobra hood cave" The animals were a bit out of proportion though, since the turtle was absolutely humungous and had a pair of lions feet half way up its back.

After that though I was sick of being on the road alone, but I still had a lot of travelling to get through yet.