Sunday, March 26, 2023 - Colombo, Sri Lanka

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March 26 – Colombo, Sri Lanka – Day 2 

Today, we are taking the “Included” tour which is the usual city tour. We’ve got a great guide. His English is far superior to yesterday’s guide. We can actually understand him. 

We will spend about 3 hours riding around Colombo with only a couple of stops. Many photos are taken through the bus windows which adds reflections and haze. There aren’t a lot of buildings left from the colonial period but the few that are still here are striking. In many cases, the original building was built by the Portuguese, then the Dutch would modernize it to meet their ideas. Like many of the areas we have visited in Southeast Asia, there are numerous religions being practiced here. The primary one is Buddhism, with some Muslim and some Christian.

This one is a bit wierd.

We stopped to look, nobody seemed to notice the fire trucks in the courtyard until I looked at the pictures much later.

Have no idea what was going on,

Obviously a mosque. The date says 1908 (I think), but that is from a previous site, This site is from about 6 years ago.

 

 

Our first stop is at the Gangaramaya Temple which is a Buddhist Temple. It is quite a complex and lovely. It appealed to me more than any other Buddhist Temple I’ve seen over the last several weeks. The Image House is full of sculptures. The many different images of Buddha and then sculptural depictions of significant events in Buddha’s life. There is also the requisite “Bo Tree” or Sacred Fig tree. Most Buddhist Temples will have this tree. Buddha was sitting under a Bo Tree when he gained enlightenment. We also learned that, if at possible, a Buddhist Temple will have it’s own elephant. Elephants are quite long lived.

 

Deep 3-D (either carved or plaster statuary) throughout this portion of the temple.

Magnificent!

The Buddha and his son, The son asked for a favor. Buddha made his son a monk against the mother's wishes.

After that, boys could not become monks without the mother's permision.

The ceiling was batt and board. And painted beautifully.

By an entrance to the temple. The dog looks alive.

 

The sacred tree. Probably 150 years old. Amazing

The root system of this amazing tree. Ficus religiosa. Sacred to these people. Every buddhist temple has one of these trees.

 

We also stopped at Colombo’s Independence Hall. A very attractive and interesting edifice.

 

 Really a lovely building. There were many people there that were drawing various features of the building (I assume an art class of some sort. The drawings that I saw were very good. 

On the way back to the ship, we were able to get a photo of the Lotus Tower. An interesting building that really shows it’s stuff after dark. I’ll post a separate blog about that that will be mostly photos.