Kandy, Sri Lanka
Today is a momentous day for Sri Lanka and tension is in the air. The president Mahinda Rajapaksa faces the reckoning of the people and no-one knows quite what will happen.
The famous shape of the island gives it its name - Lanka, meaning teardrop. Over the centuries the Portugese, Dutch and finally British renamed it, eventually becoming Ceylon, but upon independence they reverted to the original Sinhalese Lanka, with the prefix Sri, meaning 'holy'.
The nation is praying that the land of the holy teardrop does not shed bloody ones today, and the police are more visible as we drive in case of curfew, while the roads are clearer of traffic but feature many more people walking along, heading to the polling booths where they will get ink on their finger to show they have voted.
We are told when we check out of the hotel that if we need to buy anything we should do it before 2pm in case the shops close and Kingsley decides to get petrol too just in case a full curfew is put into effect.
Along the roads all the big posters of the president are covered with black drapes today as a concession to impartiality and we notice that every liquor store is shuttered up with grilles and padlocks. Alcohol sales are forbidden throughout the country for the next 48 hours.
It seems somewhat appropriate as we're heading off to a couple of the holiest Buddhist sites in the world today, the first of which - Dambulla - is still within the Cultural Triangle. A complex of five cave temples built into a large rock outcrop they date from the 1st Century AD to the 14th.
However before we ascend the long staircases hewn into the rock we are confronted with a far more modern sight, a colossal golden Buddha sat upon a temple with a gaudy, toothy mouth as its entrance and a long procession of life-size monk statues marching around the mountain side towards it.
At the top of our ascent we enter a beautiful whitewashed courtyard complex, behind whose doors are the utterly breathtaking cave temples, as solemn and ornate as the most elaborate cathedrals. Hundreds of statues of Buddha in various poses fill the rooms and every inch of every surface is painted with depictions of him and lotus flower decorations.
Kingsley tells us Dambulla is sometimes referred to as the largest art gallery in Asia as a result and I ask him if the temples are still used as places of worship. My question is answered right at that moment as we are ushered out to make way for a ceremony.
The sanctity is somewhat ruined by the irreverence of two monkeys furiously copulating on the steps as we leave.
Next on the itinerary is a visit to a spice plantation but Kerala provided all the spices we need so we tell Kingsley we want to skip it and go straight to Kandy to see as much of it as possible before any lockdown happens.
Unlike Tensing, Kingsley has scrupulously adhered to speed limits, sometimes driving painfully slowly and encouraging us to see as much of the beautiful countryside as we can, even stopping for us to take photos when we don't want to. So today we tell him not to spare the horses and he puts his foot down to get us there in super-quick time.
The name Kandy means mountain and we climb up 1760 ft above sea level, crossing the bridge into the city by lunchtime, and driving up above the lake to Senani Restaurant, which has a panoramic view of the city laid out below us. Home to 1.5 million of Sri Lanka's 22 million population, it was the capital of the country before the British took control from the last Sri Lankan king in 1815 and moved the seat of government to Colombo.
Straight after lunch of fiery Sri Lankan curries we drive to the Sacred Temple of the Tooth, which (supposedly) houses a tooth rescued from the ashes of the Buddha's funeral pyre and smuggled from India to Sri Lanka. It is famed for its miraculous powers but kept hidden from view in an ornate casket within a secret room in the temple buildings. Every August a replica gets processed through the town on the back of an elephant in front of tens of thousands of people,
We are turned away initially as Coman is in shorts but fortunately all our luggage is in the car, so a quick change later and we gain entry. The temples are beautiful with devotees chanting in front of a photo of the replica and lotus flower offerings laid out amongst the burning incense.
In the main shrine room are a Buddhist version of the Stations of the Cross; 21 paintings telling the story of the relic from the birth of Prince Siddhartha, his enlightenment to become the Buddha, his funeral pyre, the miracles of the tooth in India and Sri Lanka as it was moved between countries for safe keeping over the millennia, its final transportation back to Sri Lanka hidden in the hair of a princess for safe-keeping after the Portuguese were defeated, and ending with the British handing custody of the relic back to the Sri Lankan people in 1853.
We are relieved to have seen the Sacred Temple of the Tooth - a place of huge national significance - before the curfew happens and as we leave more and more shops are boarded up, with police and army on the streets and various roads being closed. Instead of heading to our hotel as planned, where we may be confined for the next day or two if things kick off, we continue on to the Rangahala Cultural Dance centre for a display of Sri Lankan dance and fire-walking scheduled for our amusement tomorrow.
The polls have closed and it is dark by the time we reach our hotel, the Cinnamon Citadel high on the hills above Kandy on the banks of the Mahaweli river. We are shown to our room but the family next door are making so much noise we ask to move and get given a garden room instead - a nice little upgrade with the unfortunate addition, we discover the next morning, of ants crawling across our bedside tables.
Dinner is taken as a buffet in Panorama, the balcony restaurant overlooking the pool, to the strains of an easy-listening band in the lobby playing muzak covers of the likes of Lionel Ritchie and John Lennon. Their version of 'Imagine' seems particularly apposite as we head to bed hoping the result of the election brings peace rather than violence.
