Sunday, 10 Sep 2023
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Text & pix by Mahil Wijesinghe
At this time of the year, during the month of Esala (July/August)the focus is on Kandy – the hill capital, because of the annual Sri Dalada Perahera. Crowds throng Mahanuwara, the capital of Kanda Uda Rata, which earned the reputation of being the last Sinhalese kingdom which kept the foreign rulers at bay for nearly 500 years.
For over 15 years, as a photographer, I had...
An acquired taste, this delicacy has the fisher folk in Negombo drying fish on the beach and toiling under the scorching sun.
Meka den visabeejayakwela (This has become a germ, now) lamented a middle aged fisherman while I was taking photographs of the dried fish makers on the Negombo beach. It took me a while to understand what he said. Probably, he referred to the...
It is late afternoon. We can see the silhouette of trees with dead branches jutting out against a cloudless sky. On the rock boulder, the orange rays of the sun are reflected in the Kumana Wewa. There is a soft hush in the air.
We climb the flat rocky terrain in Kumana through the dense jungle. Birds including hawk-eagles and spoon-bills are on tree-tops. Suddenly, I...
Ambalama’ is a Sinhala word for a wayside rest-house. I first saw one when I was trekking to Sri Pada, (Adam’s Peak) as a boy with my grandmother in latter part of 1970s. I saw several buildings along the trek up to the peak where weary pilgrims stop over to take a respite from their long journey.
Ambalama was closely associated with the culture of Sri Lankan community....
I had a long cherished ambition to photograph the massive standing Buddha statue of Maligawila, one day. That day finally dawned on January 15, 2008, a day before the gruesome LTTE bomb attack that took many innocent lives in the Maligawila, Okkampitiya and Niyadella villages.
The day before the bomb exploded, I travelled along the same road and saw women bathing in the...
Text & pix by Mahil Wijesinghe
Temple excursions in Kandy
Shading our eyes against the rays of a mild sun, we gazed further inside the narrow Daulagala - Embilimeegama road and the grand...
Temple excursions around Kandy
Sri Lanka is embellished by countless Viharas and Devalas. Not surprisingly, there are many such places of spiritual...
This photographic essay is on Sri Lanka’s age-old relationship with temple elephants. During the days of the Esala Perahera, I...
I walked the streets of the beautiful hill country capital, the city of Kandy, home to the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha....
A journey into the historic
One of the grand cultural festivals of the island, the annual Esala Perahera of Senkadagala commences in August. On the eve of...
The Beira Lake is not an unfamiliar place to most of us, but very few may be aware of its history – from its beginning in the...
It is an arduous pilgrimage to the sacred tamarind tree shrine of Kebilitta that lies in the jungle of the Yala Block III near...
I looked around Vedasitikanda in the distance, and saw a glistering wall around the temple complex on the summit. I wish I was...
Pageantry, ceremony and ritual are part of everyday life in Sri Lanka. No matter where and when you travel to in any part of the...
Kurunegala, or to use its historical name - Hasthihaliyapura and the modern name - ‘Ethu-gal-pura’ literally translates to ‘...
We had an opportunity on a two-day historical excursion when the country was returning to normalcy following Covid-19 and the...
One gloomy morning, I was in Negombo, the country’s fourth largest city, to see its colonial legacy inherited from the European...
A few decades ago, the delightful seaside resort of Hambantota was a sleepy town in Southern part of Sri Lanka. It was an amazing...
Near Ingiriya, in the Kalutara district, meet a community of monastic bhikkhus thriving on the ancient discipline of meditation...
Bandagiriya
The sky was cloudy and not so bright in the morning when we drove toward Bandagiriya (literally, Connected Mountains) off the...
This is the time of the year when nature is at her best and one cannot miss the vibrant hues all around as well as the fragrance...
A Buddhist temple with a tinge of British flavour! This may sound odd, but there really is one such cave temple in the Uva...
Laxapana
You don’t have to go to Europe to visit picturesque mountain towns and villages. The charming Koththelena village, with its...
Roadside shrines dedicated to the elephant-headed Lord Ganesh and other Hindu deities in tea estates in the central highlands,...
Last month, Sri Lanka Railways added a new train named ‘Seethawaka Odyssey’ to operate on the Kelani Valley route, to boost...
Although I prefer to visit the less frequented sites around the country, I recently had an opportunity to visit the county’s most...
Ratnapura, known as Minipura or the City of Gems is my adopted hometown. After the lapse of a year, I am back in Ratnapura to...
The ancient cultural concept of the Dagaba, Keth Yaya (paddy field) and Wewa (tank), revolved around the Pansala (temple) and...
The sprawling Uda Walawe reservoir of Embilipitiya is one of the largest irrigation schemes in the South-Central area of the...
As we enter a new year, images of incredible courage and resolution are imprinted in our minds. But most of the religious minded...
The awe-inspiring 18th-Century Christ Church Warleigh in Dickoya is much more than a church. It is a spiritual centre, an...
The sounds of birds in the wee hours in the jungle are soothing, as wild elephants come in search of food to the edge of the...
The Southern part of Sri Lanka is dotted with exquisite Buddhist temples with long histories and unique features of colonial...
‘Ambalama’ is a Sinhala word for a wayside rest-house. I first saw one when I was trekking to Sri Pada, (Adam’s Peak) with my...
Dambadeniya is a majestic, isolated and ancient city off the Kurunegala- Giriulla road. From the Kurunegala town off the Giriulla...
It was a bright sunny morning when we visited Padavigampola and its environs as the morning sun rays filtered through a vast...
A hamlet in the heart of rural Rambukkana, surrounded by paddy fields and huts, flanked by low hills and rivulets, little known...
Mulgirigala (more commonly called Mulkirigala) is an imposing and historical rock cave temple in the South, to which the Dutch...
If, like me, you are a lover of Sinhala songs, you will no doubt have been mesmerised by Sunil Edirisinghe song Kayman dorakada...
The Galle city is home to a population of around 100,000. Easily reached via the Southern Expressway, the A2 Highway or the...
Although I frequent remote places in the interior of the country, it doesn’t mean that I dislike Colombo and its environs. It was...
The easiest way to get to Matara is by the Southern Expressway. The new road greatly shortens the driving time of six and a half...
Imposing steep mountains clothed in a mantle of greenery with patches of cloud either drifting across or resting atop them...
We set off in the wee hours of the morning to explore the not-so-well-known Kukuluwa rock cave temple on isolated forest patches...
The sylvan surroundings of this ruined hermitage is also home to extensive archaeological findings. Strewn in the entire hill of...
Looking for something different, something more adventurous, something off the beaten track, we decided to explore a lesser known...
I visited the Maha Saman Devala with my family at an auspicious time before the commencement of the annual Perahera every year....
The Kelani Ganga is not merely a river. It has holiness beyond humanity. The river is connected closely with the Sinhala Buddhist...
On our journey, in search of the beauty of Trincomalee, we spent another day visiting some ancient, historic Buddhist sites in...
Amid the blue ocean and lagoon, stands this thousand-year-old historic temple known as Samudragiri Vihara Trincomalee and...
Kataragama Deviyo:
Pageantry, ceremony and ritual are part of everyday life in Sri Lanka. No matter where you travel to in any part of the country...
The nique Bodhigaraya (Bo-Tree enclosure) at the Padikemgala Raja Maha Vihara hidden in the woods would tell a thousand stories....
Ifirst visited the Magul Maha Vihara in 1990 with my mother during one of our regular pilgrimages to Kataragama. Normally,...
One of the best preserved Bodhi-garas (Bo-tree house) in the country is in Nillakgama, Hettigama. Our journey seeking the...
There is no spot in Anuradhapura more sacred than the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi. Whenever I visit Anuradhapura, the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi...