Under the Shadow of the Temple of Sacred Tooth Relic

Year and Month	July, 2013 (12th)
Number of Days	One Day Trip
Crew	2
Accommodation	N/A
Transport	Podi Manike Train
Activities	Photography/ Archeology
Weather	Excellent
Route	Colombo -> Kandy.
Tips, Notes and Special remark	Be sure to speak to Charles uncle at the Garrison Cemetery coz he’s a walking encyclopedia when it comes to info about the place. Try to jot down as much info as possible coz those historical details are as vital as the pics. The leaflet says that the Garrison Cemetery is closed on Sundays but the notice board at the entrance says that they are open daily from 08.00 to 06.00. (unfortunately couldn’t double check with Uncle Charles) The Kandy Museum is just next door right behind the Temple of Tooth Relic. Beware of guides (at the museum) trying to sell you artifacts and maps. Details given with the report. Water is essential to keep you going. No entrance fee for Garrison cemetery but you’re welcome to contribute to the till kept at the small church-like building at the entrance. For the museum, the ticket price is 20/- and if you wanna take your camera, you have to buy a ticket for 250/-. Bring back memories and don’t leave anything but footprints.
Author	SriAbey
Comments	Discuss this trip report, provide feedback or make suggestions at Lakdasun Forum on the thread Under the Shadow of the Temple of Sacred Tooth Relic

Thursday 11 July 2013.
1.28am:

“Good Morning! What’s up? Getting ready?” – came Tony’s reply on Thursday 11 July morning.
“I’m sorry Tony, I’ve got fever and been shivering like a Polar Bear without its fur coat. What do you think” – I asked Tony coz he’s a medical guy and got tons of experience under his belt.
“How do you feel? Coz if you’ve fever, we shouldn’t go. What do you think?” – Tony sounds like my Montessori Teacher.
“I’m not sure, but I can’t miss out on this one even if it means the end of me” – ever so stubborn my inner self retorts.
“See how you feel and let me know; I’m ok to postpone this” – Tony trying to cheer me up.

If you wonder what Greek I’ve put up, please accept my apologies. This was the conversation we had just before our mega journey we had planned from 11 July to 14 July. However, I felt very weak and feverish in the middle of the night and the conversation Tony and I had was what you had to read up front…

It came as a nightmare coz I’d never before fallen sick or anything making me to postpone any of my trips but as the saying goes there’s always a first time, this had to be it. I then called my other two friends and put off the journey for the following day coz I was intending to make it at all costs whether I got better within 24hrs or not.

My doctor had to listen to all the complaining and he duly prescribed me some medicine diagnosing it to be a viral flu (damn all of them) and said I should be ok by the following day but walking long distances wouldn’t be a good idea. I already felt better hearing those words.

Having taken my medicine like the God himself presented, I was ready to go and informed Tony and others that we’re after all going ahead even though they were skeptical about my health condition and rightly so. Coz I didn’t feel myself and the bitterness in my mouth won’t simply go away reminding that the fever is still lurking inside me.

The following morning I got up even though I felt like I had chained to the bed and called the rest of the guys and to make matters worse, Lasantha said that he’d got something that had to be attended to and will join us the following day. Can something go more wrong than this? I then joined Tony at the fort railway station and bought three tickets for Kandy to find that my other friend, Dimuthu, is getting late. I was fuming inside and trying my best not to show it when I asked him to come to Kandy straight in the first bus.

However, it turned out to be a hidden gem as we managed to learn a lot of new things and see a lot of unseen during that time. So all good things come at a price and they come in many disguises. So if something like this happens to you, don’t regret it or get worked up. There’s always a silver ray in every dark cloud, if not try to make one.

National Museum of Kandy – Where our heritage speaks

Tour Highlights:

1. Garrison Cemetery, Kandy
2. National Museum, Kandy

Tony and I had a nice little chat along with our snacks till we reached Kandy around 8.30am. Dimuthu was still in Ambepussa which means good two hours for us to kill. Having taken some pics of the bunnies in the front garden of the station, Tony and I headed towards “Dalada Maligawa” but couldn’t try to go inside as I was in shorts. So when we were passing Maligawa, suddenly a thought struck me. I had been trying to visit “Garrison Cemetery” for a long time and this looked like a very good opportunity.

These are new fellows…

Hugging and eating… cutie bunnies

Know the name?

Never got the chance to see up close

Would’ve been a grand bathing place

Not Donald Duck…

Ducklings nestling together

How many of these structures go unnoticed?

This is what it had on the body… Map of Kandy in 1815 – Click Image to Enlarge

As usual, parents were trying as if there’s no tomorrow to take their kids under the belly of this jumbo….

Kandy lake standing tall, and cleaner

Garrison Cemetery, Kandy

Tony readily agreed and we went searching for it and found it right behind the Maligawa. There was a public toilet just passing the signage where Tony put on his make up while I convinced the caretaker to keep our bags till we returned with a small amount of money.

Entering the cemetery makes you feel just like another typical cemetery but there was this uneasiness (if I may say so) as well. We saw plenty of tombs rising from the ground and two people (an older and a younger fellow) were working on the ground planting grass. Only visitors were Tony and I so it was possible to check the place out in our own leisurely manner. When I was taking a few pictures, Tony the chatter-box, got into conversation with the older person whose name was “Charles”.

He was a very knowledgeable and friendly person who immediately stopped his work to explain the importance of the cemetery and other historical facts. According to him, wild boars are a major threat to the cemetery compound as they come and dig around the graves looking for something to eat. Since there’s no wall but a chain link fence, resulting many wild boars coming from adjacent “Udawatta Kele” forest patch and digging around.

Charles uncle said that they have to replant all the grass everyday dug by the wild boars and we witnessed virtually every place is scattered with dug out earth and grass and they trying in vain to restore them.

Funnily enough, Tony found some common gossips to talk with him too. Apparently he’s heard about Tony’s great grandparents and grandparents. They were talking like long-lost family friends while I was happily picturing everything I could within that time.

Apparently Price Charles was due to visit the cemetery during his visit to SL in 1998 on our 50th independence celebrations but the LTTE bomb had made him change his mind. So much for the ever so brave British Empire.

General Info about Garrison Cemetery:

1. The land mass of the Garrison Cemetery is 0.75acres.
2. There are about 195 graves according to the leaflet printed by “Friends of the British Garrison Cemetery” but Charles uncle said 163 tombs and around 450 bodies buried. (There are graves with more than one body)
3. First grave was of Captain James McGlashan who had died at the age of 26 on 2 December 1817. He had fought alongside Napoleon Bonaparte in Waterloo and many other places such as Busaco and Albuera.
4. The last grave belongs to James Henry Fretz and his family of 6 members on 03 Mar 1951.
5. Edmund Sampson Waring’s tomb was a somewhat special one as he was considered by the British as a traitor. He was supposed to fight “Veera Puran Appu’s” army to safeguard the Kachcheri of Matale, but when the army surrounded the Kachcheri, he fled and saved his life leaving Puran Appu’s army to burn the place down.
6. There was the tomb of the Governor William Henry Gregory’s (1872-1877) wife Elizabeth Gregory too among them.
7. We even saw the Cargills Machinery Suppliers grave which might have been extended to the the birth of current supermarket giant.
8. Main causes for deaths in that time had been Malaria and Cholera.
9. British High Commission of SL has agreed to build a wall around the cemetery to safe guard it better
10. The cemetery is mainly run by the Ministry of Defense in London through the Commonwealth Graves Commission in the UK.
11. You can see the famous John Doyly’s grave at the cemetery. He was said to be very fluent in Sinhala and behind the conspiracy which led to the brutal killings of Ehalepola Family. Gajaman Nona, famous poetess from Matara had addressed him with a set of verses.

When you visit don’t forget to talk to Charles Uncle and he’ll load you with all the info you need to know and I tried vehemently to jot down as much as possible. He’ll show you the tiny Dutch church in front of the cemetery which houses the original map of the place and will even present you with a leaflet with some important details of the people who are buried there.

Having made a small contribution towards the restoration of the cemetery, we bid our farewell to Uncle Charles and retraced our steps. Collecting our bags and saying our thanks to the caretaker, we started descending back towards the road when I remembered that there was the museum next door. Turned around and asked the caretaker if we could visit the place and he nodded and that’s all I wanted.

Entering the Cemetery Road, you can see the museum from here

Through the stony entrance

Various tombs scattered around

The last erected one of James Henry Fretz

The Prominent one is John Doyly’s

It says it all

From far corner towards the entrance

Uncle Charles, the caretaker

The traitor’s tombstone

The one with the fence around it belongs to a kid, there are plenty of like these… in some graves, 6-7 people are buried together

Governor Gregory’s wife

See the wild boars’ digging?

Another one, the writing slowly fading away

More than 160 tombs in all

The door of the tiny church like building

The map of the cemetery – Click Map to Enlarge

Pics taken during restoration work – Click Image to Enlarge

Article published on Sunday Times

This is the interior

They are keeping records of everyone buried there – Click Image to Enlarge

The cards are nicely indexed

This is the church

National Museum, Kandy

I always want to visit a museum whenever I find one coz that’s where you can learn many things and see hundreds of invaluable artifacts and documents of our history. We bought our tickets and I had to pay 250/- for taking my camera with me which I duly obliged. There was a place with a sign saying “Keep Your Baggage Here” but it’s now occupied by security personnel so had to leave our bags just inside the museum.

What I found very amusing was a bronze statue of Governor Henry Ward at the front of the Museum. It wasn’t Veera Puran Appu, Gongalegoda Banda, Keppetipola Adikarama or any other national heroes’, but the British Governor Henry Ward. I felt disgusted at the attitude of our archaeological gurus and patriotic maestros. Why on earth do we keep one of invaders’ (who looted our country and made our people slaves and destroyed our culture) statue at the front of a key national museum? What a crazy bunch of people are we?

Entering into the museum, I already felt time goes back hundreds of years in seconds. There was this guides (I hope that’s what you call them who’s supposed to roam around you answering any questions you have) whose name was “Shanta” who joined us touring the museum complex.

There were all sorts uniquely Kandyan dresses, jewelry, evidence of ways of life, furniture, weapons and many other things. Then Tony as usual got into talks with our guide and he was very curious about our plans rather than trying to explain what’s inside the museum. When I asked him when the museum was opened, he said must be in the 1960s. He works for the museum and he had no clear idea as to when it was opened. Hilarious, wasn’t it?

When Tony mentioned about our plans to visit Meemure, he wanted to know everything about Meemure and what’s there worth visiting and I was wondering if we were taking him a guided tour to Meemure or he was taking us a guided tour of the Museum. Most of the time, Tony played the guide and he the tourist and I was constantly annoyed seeing this joke enfolding in front of me.

There was no one nearby other than this fellow who could answer a basic question and I started to question the use of employing people like these paying so much money but not getting enough in return. Imagine how they were gonna give info to foreigners? (I don’t intend to criticize the whole bunch of them and know that there are many who really try to give as much info as possible to visitors)

There was another friend of him (must be another guide or an employee) who joined our conversation about visiting Meemure. Can you imagine our plight? I asked if the museum houses many swords and they had no idea and I had to check it for myself coz I wanted to picture them all in case another Super Human broke into that just like Colombo National Museum. At least I’ll have pictures of them with me.

The most intriguing bit was the number of knives and the jars containing fetuses of animals and complete snakes. They had done a very good job of preserving them. While I kept an close eye on the clock as we had our main journey ahead of us and waiting for Dimuthu to arrive in Kandy, Tony had been talking to those guides about Garrison Cemetery coz we had just visited the place.

Seeing how curious Tony was about the cemetery, our guide had shamelessly offered an original map of the cemetery and other artifacts (saying he knows somebody who owns them) for Rs. 100,000/-. I didn’t get to know until we were well away from the museum coz Tony decided that I might make a scene inside the place (I guess he thought exactly right coz I had a good mind to go and make a really big scene).

Can you believe this? How am I ever gonna believe those artifacts in the museums are what they call they really are and not fakes designed by some crooks selling the originals to the highest bidders by those greedy employees and their henchmen? Who can guarantee those swords, jewelry, clothes, documents, etc are not fakes but originals? I’ll really be very suspicious hereafter of the authenticity of those things.

I think our archeological department and the relevant authorities who are responsible for museums and other valuable things must look into this very closely and get rid of these crooks as soon as possible. If not, our museums will all bear fake stuff while the originals are carried away by Super Humans and whoever can pay the highest amount.

We reached Kandy Station around 10.45am and met with Dimuthu and went in search of a Mahiyangana bound bus coz our main aim was elsewhere.

So that was my tiny fairy tale about the unseen of Kandy even though it’s somewhat filled with venom due to the wickedness of our greedy crooks. I hope you learnt something out of this.

Will soon see you all with my next fairy tale which I’m holding very close to my heart.

Take care.