Category: Kandy

Today we left at 07.30, to go visit and celebrate Tamil Thaipongala day with local students and teachers. We went to the Kurinchijumaran temple, which is a temple at university grounds, to celebrate the festival. The festival is called Pongal, which is a Tamil holiday in which they make sacrifices to the sun. The main purpose is therefore giving the first harvest of the year to the gods. Additionally, in this celebration, they pay full respect to the cows. Pongal is very important to the Tamil people who are a minority in Sri Lanka. Even though it is considered a Hindu holiday, many Tamil people of other religions also join the festivities. Students and teachers of the university were celebrating together wearing traditional saris.

During our visit, it started to rain. However, even though it was raining, the spirits were high amongst the students. The temple we visited was beautiful and filled with colorful decorations and paintings of Hindu gods. During the celebration, it was a ritual, where many sacrificed different items such as fruits, flowers etc to the gods. There was also a distinct smell of incense which they use. Similar to the temple we visited yesterday, we had to go barefoot. Later on, we returned to the hotel for a late breakfast, with toast and scrambled eggs. We then had some time to relax and explore the city if we wished to do so, although with the full program we’ve had since our arrival, many students decided to stay at the hotel to relax. Some of us decided to eat lunch at the hotel, where we were served some local foods. Now we are soon ready to head to Anuradhapura, but first we have to pack our bags!

Today we started the day with breakfast at 8 am, and we were going to the Dalada Maligava tooth relic temple here in Kandy. Here we got to experience the Duruthu Full Moon Poyaday with the locals. The reason the temple has the name it has is because it is said that the tooth of Buddha is located inside the temple. The group were also wearing white so symbolize purity and walked barefoot as a sign of respect. We got to visit different rooms in the temple, and see how the locals were celebrating the holiday. They were also bringing flowers and gifts to honor Buddha. In one of the rooms it was a taxidermy elephant, because it had served the temple for 40 years, and was seen as a royal elephant. 🐘🪷

Later we walked to a vegetable market where they sold different varieties of vegetables and fruit. After that the we free to do as we wanted. 🛺

We ended the day with a dinner together as a group, and had a quiz about Sri Lanka, sports, history, politics and geography. 🪫

Due to some traffic issues we arrived at the university of Peradeniya Department of Geography at 10.15 am to greet Dr. Arularasi Balakrishnan. Her lecture begun with an overview of the social landscape in Sri Lanka where she noted that Sri Lanka is ranked 78th on the Human Development Index. More so she went over the traditional settlement setup- which includes a river, a tank system and a paddy. Her discussion primarily focused on the causes, impacts and future of the economic crisis in Sri Lanka. Dr. Arularasi Balakrishnan gave some of the causes as follows: unsustainable debt accumulation, decline in foreign reserves, policy mistes, structural economic issues, external shocks and more. Later she went on to explain how these causes contributed to inflation and a foreign reserve crisis, including a comprehensive analysis of the political impacts of economic crisis. Lastly, she informed us about the response and recovery measures to taken to resolve the economic crisis. She left us to ponder the question of what Sri Lanka's economic future will be

After our lecture we went to an NGO called Women Development Center and their store called Sthree Shop-Social Enterprise. While we were there we got an introduction from the women working there about what their organization is working towards and for whom. The main goals of the organization is to support and equip women-led community groups with the knowledge, resources and skills necessary for them to be able to challenge the social injustices they face. gender-based violence. They were invested in helping women, children and disabled people with their (3/4) facilities around the city Kandy and with their trainers being well-trained in caring and helping the disabled. After their introduction they served us lunch, a traditional Sri Lankan meal consisting of dahl, rice, papadam, mango curry and more. After a while we got to explore their store that contained many of their hand-made items of clothing, accessories and more, including cultural items.

In the evening we went to a cultural dance show at the Kandyan Cultural Center. There we were able to see many different types of dances. For example, the Mayuranatum (peacock-dance) and the Ginisisila (fire-dance). In addition to the dancing were both drums and traditional clothing and masks. The performers were dancing with fire, balancing plates and doing acrobatics. It was a great cultural experience for us and a good way to end today's program.

Group 1 - Andrea, Julia, Kaja, Lorelei

Today we had our first travel day here in Sri Lanka. After breakfast at 8am, we got in the bus and headed for Kandy, where we are spending the next four days. The trip was approximately 7 hours long, but as we drove towards Kandy, there were a beautiful scenery the whole way there, which made the trip feel shorter than it was. It was also the first day since we got here that we were able to relax for several hours, which was much needed after a hectic week in Matara.

We ended up stopping for lunch at the Leone cafe where we got a verity of sandwiches and fries. There were also musicians playing for us when we ate, which was a fun experience.

When we closed in on Kandy, we were able to learn a few facts about the city of Kandy. This included that Kandy was the only city during colonial times in Sri Lanka, that were not controlled by the British settlers. We also learned that Kandy is the last capital of Sri Lanka.

When we arrived at the hotel, there were now time to relax a little bit more, before dinner. Today, most of the class chose to stay at the hotel for dinner, which had delicious food.

We are excited for the next few days here in Kandy.

Group 6: Gina, Azin, Kagnew og Siri