Kandy & Knuckles Mountains

Kandy, the most sacred city of Sri Lanka where Lord Buddha’s Tooth Relic now calls home at Kandy’s royal palace, The Temple of Tooth Relic, the highlight of Kandy where one could observe centuries old Buddhist rituals. Kandy is in the top of the list of any traveler and is a cultural kaleidoscope of Sri Lanka. One could visit Temple of Tooth Relic, attend to evening cultural folk dance show, visit centuries old temples, take a walk in Peradeniya Botanical garden, visit a charity Elephant care foundation to have a private time with an Elephant and do some city walks exploring street bazaar and Kandy market. But in our opinion Kandy has more than this. We have some nice experiences in Kandy where you could stay with a local family for one or two nights where you would be able to go to local markets, explore Kandyan home spice gardens (Not the commercial spice garden traps), visit a local bakery, learn to cook in traditional Sri Lankan style, be entertained by neighboring children with a dance when they visit the local family and talk with the local family about the culture of your country and exchange the cultural experience. This is real community based travel at its best.

This is not all, if you feel more adventurous, we have very good villagers who are good trekking guides. They will take you for a guided trekking/hiking trip in the rural Knuckles mountains to explore the cloud forests, rural tea estates, rural Kandyan villages, terraced rice fields where Buffaloes are still used for farming work, see the hidden waterfalls or even stay a night or two in a remote mountain camp for overnight trekking expeditions in the Knuckles. These are the best ways to interact with locals and learn about simple lifestyles of the mountainous communities.

This could be even extended to indigenous Veddha tribal village in the foothills of Knuckles where one could stay a night or two in their village, under a tent exploring their primitive way of life, going bush walks with Veddha and learning their dances, food, hunting techniques so on and so forth.