Colombo is capital and largest city on south-west of Sri Lanka. It’s climate is like Karachi; when the sun is out it is too hot and when it rains, it is humid.
We had our lunch at an Indian restaurant Amrith Masala Talk.
The driver was more of a guide and he could speak good English. He explained everything in detail while he took us through the streets of Colombo towards Independence square. On independence square, we visited independence monument which was constructed as remembrance of independence from British rule. It contains a big hall with pillars on sides decorated with traditional Sri Lankan designs.
Many statues of lions are placed on the outside around the hall.
On one side of hall, there is statue of first Sri Lankan Prime Minister, which is also surrounded by four lions.
There is a Museum under the main building but it was closed for renovations. You can visit it by paying a small fee, however, if you want to take camera in, the rate is a bit higher.
We walked through the city and stopped to see a typical Buddhist Gangaramaya (Vihara) temple and a museum, which has world’s smallest Buddha gold statue and a Buddha sculpture whose eyes appear to look towards you as you walk past in front of him – a neck bending Buddha. This place also had many valuable statues and sculptures, some of them built totally with gold.
Our next stop was a visit to an old sacred temple and library Treasury of Truth which was located in Beira lake. There’s a wooden bridge into the lake which takes us to main temple meditation building after passing through a big Budhha foot-print on which people threw some coins as their offerings to Buddha. Driver told us that ‘Treasury of Truth’ is always kept locked (
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