Travel Day 1114 – Kandy, SRI LANKA
After the long day and the even longer night at the Esala Perahera Parade, the annual 10 day festival was technically finished…
Tooth Relic Elephant at Esala Perahera
Well, technically meant that all the nightly processions were over, but today there was still a shorter afternoon parade happening and I was debating if I really wanted to see it again. The festival yesterday had been a bit too stressful and expensive for my taste. Also after hours and hours of parade, it really wasn’t quite clear to me if it was worth it to see the same thing one more time in daylight. But in the end I decided to have at least a look from the distance…
To my big surprise the streets were not nearly as crowded as they had been yesterday and instead of occupying seats, everybody was actually standing in the streets. Also the fact that it was raining on and off was probably helping the effort of keeping the crowds at a reasonable limit. So I finally managed to get a decent standing spot under a canopy and then all we had to do was wait for the elephants, the whips and the music to arrive…
Jugglers and Elephants at Esala Parade
Luckily it wasn’t too long before the Day Perahera was doing their loop from the temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic and up in front of the Queens Hotel. This was precisely the spot where I had positioned myself and so I finally had the chance to see the whole spectacle from a different perspective. Not only was it great to see all the different costumes in daylight, but it was also good to be closer by the parade and experience the impressive scale of the elephants who were slowly swaying through the streets…
The drummers were amazing, the dancers were great, the guys handling the whips or fire were good, as were the jugglers, but the majestic looking elephants were by far my favorite. Today they didn’t wear their outfits with the colorful lights which gave the whole parade yesterday this out-of-space feel, but in daylight they rather impressed by their mere presence. All the elephants walked really slowly and calmly while flapping with their ears every once in a while and the only sound they made while passing by, was the slight jingle of the chains that were wrapped loosely around their necks…
Dancers at Perahera Festival in Kandy
Actually when I first saw the elephants yesterday, chained up around the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, I was reminded of my negative experiences in Chitwan National Park in Nepal. The elephants there had had deep scars on top of their ears and they screamed in terror whenever the ruthless elephant drivers were hitting them with a skinny stick for no apparent reason at the same spot again and again. But here in Sri Lanka it seemed that the elephant drivers were much more clam and gentle, actually caring with their elephants…
And while I was watching all the elephants go by, I was thinking that their better treatment was probably a positive side effect of having been born in a deeply rooted Buddhist country. I really liked that thought and I really enjoyed seeing the entire Elasa Perahera parade go by one more time, but after that, I definitely had enough of street parades with costumes and festivals with elephants for quite a while…
Find all Kandy Esala Perahera photos here.
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