Samut Saring Ceylon

Tue 20 May 2008

Kandalama for Kids 1

As I have mentioned in an earlier post, Kandalama is teeming with life yet so serene and Sri Lankan. I don't want to over emphasize its beauty with too many words as this might sound like a travel blog when it is not. This is still about homeschooling and it is a field trip, you see =). Let me share with you some photos we have taken - well, you have seen many of them early in this series. I still have more to share and will post it in two parts. A place is so beautiful and captivating, a place called Kandalama.

A lotus.

A structure built to blend in the rocks of a mountain wall. Reminds me of Helms Deep but not quite.

Bird friendly lobby gets a nest from one of the resident bulbuls. This a back
of a wrought iron bench.

Architect Geoffrey Bawa has designed this building to blend well with the mountain and the wild growth of trees and vines

Reminds me of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon but this is just a fraction, i know but even then, it is still breath taking!

Do you know that wildlife like monkeys, lizards and exotic birds live in these entangled vines as guests live just inside the walls and windows of this hotel?

A kid's mud hut

Miniature of the typical hut in the rural areas.

Sigiriya rock view

This place is so serene..

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Mon 19 May 2008

The Ancient Tank of Kandalama

Posted in Sri Lanka

"Let not even a drop of rain water go to the sea without benefiting man".

Parakrama Bahu 1153–1186 AD , words which inspired ancient Sinhalese to build the tanks

'Wewa' - n. ancient tanks of Sri Lanka built by the early settlers in villages around the fourth century B.C. These tanks were made to provide irrigation for the farmland on the Dry Zone in western part of the island.

According to Sir Henry Ward, Governor of Sri Lanka In: Collected Minutes of Brohier (1934) "...no other part of the world are there to be found within the same space, the remains of so many works of irrigation, which are, at the same time, of such great antiquity, and of such vast magnitude as Ceylon. Probably no other country can exhibit works so numerous, and at the same time so ancient and extensive, within the same limited area, as this Island."

Amazing but true. Many of the tanks are now under restoration (Plan Sri Lanka project) but what is more amazing is that many of the preserved wildlife of this country are thriving quite impressively around the vicinity of these tanks.