August 3, 2002 - The Golden Temple of Dambulla

We stopped at the Dambulla temple on our way back from our trip to the rock fortress, Sigiriya.  Since we had climbed to the very peak of Sigiriya and back, we were exhausted to begin with.  So therefore, climbing Dambulla at this point wasn't exactly easy.  To add to that, at a certain point up the Dambulla rock, you are supposed to take off your shoes and walk barefooted, since you're supposedly within the premises of a Buddhist temple.  Walking up a solid granite rock that had baked from the 90 degree tropical sun, barefooted, was certainly a fete!  However, once we reached the summit where the actual cave temples were located, it made the trek worthwhile.

The temple consists of 5 separate caves that are hewn from a big rock. The caves were originally used as hiding places. Later on in history they were embellished more and more by several kings. On the inside, the caves are decorated with religious and secular paintings from the 15th and 16th century.

Inside the caves we saw 150 images of Buddha together with representations of several of the Hindu gods.

On the way up the rock to the temple caves, we saw plenty of monkeys at very close quarters.  They seemed to be very tame.  This picture was an especially cute one of a family- mother, father and 2 baby monkeys.