The Dematamal Vihara is situated in a paddy area at the road from Butttala to the famous Maligawila Buddha Statue. The temple lies about 4 km from the Buttala town. The historic brick stupa of Dematamal Vihara is said to date back to the earliest Buddhist period of Sri Lanka. According to local beliefs, the monastery was once the place where Prince Saddhatissa was hiding after his army had been defeated by his elder brother Dutthagamani in a war of succession to the throne. It was with the help of the monks that the two brothers finally were reconciled, which was a historically significant precondition to reconquer the Tamil controlled Anuradhapura in the northern heartland by joint Sinhalese forces from the south.

Thanks to a customer inquiry, we were brought to notice that there is some confusion concerning the dates of this year's Kandy Perahera:

The information of our own article about Kandy Perahera 2018 dates at http://www.lanka-excursions-holidays.com/kandy-perahera-2018.html refers to the dates given on the Tooth Temple website  http://daladamaligawa.org/ 

The problem is. That website for further information on the dates links to https://lanka.com/events/kandy-esala-perahera/  which dates the events one day earlier.

In other words: There is some confusion wether the final Randoli Perahera takes place on the evening of 26th August or 25th August. 

Today we will only add an image to yesterday's Mannar blog post

Mannar is a town on Mannar Island, which is part of Mannar District. The town is situated at the bridge connecting mainland Sri Lanka with Mannar Island. The main attractions of the city of Mannar are the fishing port, a huge baobab tree and the Dutch fort. Mannar Island is inhabited by feral horses. In this respect, Mannar is comparable to the remote island of Delft in the Gulf of Mannar. Find comprehensive information about Mannar here...

Tuesday's blog post will be about Mannar in Sri Lanka's Northern Province...

The rarely visited temple of Dadagemuwa near Gampaha has a so-called Vatadage from the late Kandyan period. Untypically, this Vatadage is quadrangular building. Therefore, a more correct term to describe it would be Chetiyagara, which translates to „stupa house“, as it is a roofed shrine with a stupa in it. “Vatadage” translates to “round house”, as most Sinhalese temple buildings containing stupas are of a circular ground plan. The pillars of the Dadegamuwa Vatadage’s porch are in the Western colonial style, which was prevalent in the coastal plains. Like for many Sinhala names, there are various English transliterations of „Dadegamuwa“, for example „Dadagamuwa“.

We added a picture of the the mosque called Grand Masjid Sainthamaruthu to the blog article about Kalmunai that we published some days ago. It’s a typical street photo, taken from the car on the way to Dighavapi. This Grand Mosque is not far away from Kalmunai’s Sea Breeze Hotel. Travellers who have visited Kalmunai recently will easily see that this is an older photo, as the Grand Masjid Sainthamaruthu is nowadays painted in a more greenish tone.

The Kandarodai stupas are the remnants of a Buddhist temple and burial place right in the centre of Jaffna Peninsula. The stupas are from the ancient period. But according to legend, in the 16th century the famous Jaffna king Sangili harassed Buddhist monks, 60 Bhikkus left Jaffna to migrate to India. When they stayed in Kandarodai, they received alms-givings from locals. But the mushroom curry was poisoned and all of monks died. Afterwards burial stupas were constructed enshrining the relics of those monks.