Next day I decided to walk along the beach, as some of the members of our group of artists

Meeting welcoming people, offering me a cup of tea, and other possible services ,

Meeting a local boat driver offering me a lake drive, but luckilly I asked about price and decided to visit just a temple  very close to the lake,  which has huge sitting buddha inside the shrine, and gorgeous sculptures in the corridor, depicting the scenes from the Buddha’s life. On top of all the beutifull position near the lake gives to the place  amazing atmosphere.

Morakala GangaramaTemple

jatakas

naturalistic sculptures, suprisingly powerful

As I was there alone, I felt like in a film, and enjoyed the paintings outside the temple, and later walked through kind of jungle village, just observing the quiet life of the local people and their beautiful, simple houses with colourful textiles…

Back on the main Colombo-Galle road,  just walked few hundred metres, meeting the junction, observed the shops, buses and daily life.

Just across the railway there was another Temple, and inside the resting Buddha, quite  long, an again peaceful atmosphere, It was only later- I got to know, there were some hundreds???  of people escaping the Tsunami wave, and thanks to the position of the temple on the rock, they rescued their lives.

Kumarakanda Maha Viharya- place which recued thousand people

KumarakandaMaha Viharaya-resting Buddha, 6m long

Buddha under the bodhi tree

door panel with sinhalese inscriptions

 Later I decided to explore the destination bit further  and I walked all the way till the Siri Khettarama Maha Viharaya temple, some 3km inside the jungle..

also visited amazing wood mill with really simple equipment, but beutiful colours and dimensins of the wood:

I got to know, that they are preparing the temple for a festival which is going to happen during coming week. So they painted walls shiny white, and some  sort of reparation took place.

Inside the shrine was a devotee, singing beautiful prayers, so I could not resist to record part of his singing.