The Albatross
Saturday 17 August 2013
Finally we managed to get to the festival. Kandy Esala Perahera is unbelievable, it’s even better than the Koo Wee Rup potato festival (although there is no King Spud). Seriously this is a fantastic event. After a bit of a battle with the hotel about our seats (which had disappeared), our guide pulled rank by calling the head boss of his company and making the manager of the hotel speak to him. Suddenly there was no problem. Our seats were on the balcony overlooking the start of the parade, straight down the road before the first turn. Thank you Ernest and Adrian.
Ok, how to describe this? People are sitting on the streets by mid-day.
The festival runs for 11 days, but the last 6 are the big events. We’re on day 4 of the last 6. It’s absolutely insane. It starts with a canon shot, then blokes walking around cracking whips while you throw coins at them, then more blokes rolling along the ground swinging fire around their necks, and then things liven up. It is simply an orgy of sound, dance and elephants. For the next four hours thousands of people dance and sing their local temple dances down the road whilst hundreds of light strewn elephants walk between the acts.
When it was over at about 11:30pm, a sea of humanity swarmed past attempting to get to the bus station.
We went to bed tired but elated. Pictures won’t describe the sound or do justice to the spectacle. It was epic. It’s worth Kandy being half shut down and hotels at straining point just to be here.
Quite frankly Moomba needs to lift its game.