Kandy: How to See Sri Lanka's Cultural Capital Properly

Kandy occupies a natural bowl in the central highlands, surrounded on all sides by wooded hills, with a lake at its centre that was built by the last Kandyan king in 1807 and that gives the whole city a stillness it would not otherwise have. It is the last capital of the last independent Sinhalese kingdom and that history sits visibly in the city — the temple, the palaces, the royal botanical gardens, the drumming that precedes the evening puja.

The Temple of the Tooth — Sri Dalada Maligawa — is the most sacred site in Sri Lanka. The Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha, housed in the inner sanctum in a series of nested golden caskets, draws devotees from across the Buddhist world. The temple itself is a complex of buildings, courtyards, and shrines accumulated over centuries, and the evening puja — when the drums begin and the inner chamber is opened to worshippers — is one of the most moving religious ceremonies in Asia. Go. Stand in the line with everyone else. Be present.

Peradeniya Royal Botanical Gardens, five kilometres from the city centre, is one of the finest botanical gardens in Asia. 147 acres of extraordinary plant collections: an orchid house, a bamboo grove with culms as thick as columns, the great lawn lined with royal palms, the fig tree with its aerial root system occupying a space the size of a small house. Allow a full morning. Bring a book. The gardens reward slowness.

The Kandy market area near the clock tower and the lake is where the city's daily life actually happens: fresh produce, spices, short eats, the noise and colour of a working town. Walk through it without any particular destination. Buy something from a stall. Drink a glass of tea at a roadside place where nobody else is a tourist. This is the Kandy that exists alongside the cultural monuments, and it is equally worth your time.