Kandy

Kandy is a town in the hills in the middle of Sri Lanka.

Here I tried to play the game in the first photo which seems to be played a lot all over Sri Lanka. You have to flick a disc at one of your coloured discs to try and make it go into the holes at the edges. The little guy in the middle was the champion and he made it look easy. I think I only managed to pot one of my discs. Fortunately (for me) I had someone else on my team who could play a little better than me.

I also walked up to a huge Buddha statue on a hill, which I could see from my hostel. There were stairs attached to the back of the statue which you could climb up, but at the height of it's armpit there was a gate which stopped you going any further. I did try and get someone to unlock the gate but without any success. I was given two different reasons why the gate was locked. One man told me it was because people didn't know how to respect the Buddha and didn't cover their shoulders (I did point out that my shoulders were covered but still the gate remained locked). Another guy said that it was locked because you weren't aloud to walk on the Buddha's shoulders. Then a monk suggested I should just climb around the gate. I decided not to follow his suggestion as apart from anything else, falling would have meant certain death.

There was a little room inside the Buddha with sculptured pictures on the wall and painted flowers all over the ceiling.

In my hotel (the YMCA) there was a tiny kitten. She was so sweet and we played together a lot. She was as acrobatic as Mimi - our cat - and Mimi was very acrobatic! I was told that the kitten was three months old, although she was barely bigger than my hand. She had flees but they didn't bite me.