Unlike India with its Hindu temples bursting with an endless number of gods, Sri Lanka is mainly (75%) Buddhist. So just the one god to worship. But they make up for it with a statue of Buddha on (almost) every corner, atop hills and mountains, on the street, in temples and caves and parks, in small size and mega enormous. There’s ancient stone carved ones and glitzy modern gold ones. Like this whopper below.

But some have a calming mystique to them, even for a lapsed religious person like me. We went to the Royal Rock Temple in Dambulla, just north of Kandy in the centre of Sri Lanka. Here we entered five separate caves in the side of the mountain where we saw no less than 150 statues of Buddha as well as some of Sri Lanka’s most important religious art on the walls and ceilings of the caves dating back 2000 years.

Below are the feet of a 15m long reclining Buddha still with the ancient art on the soles of his feet intact from Cave 1.

One of the caves is 52m by 23m in area with a 7m high ceiling. There’s a truckload of statues in that one.

Visiting Buddhist temples is a ritual that is essential to the training of monks from all over Sri Lanka. Below are some young boys in their early years on the road to being a monk. The different coloured robes represent which temple (or monk school) they go to.

The ticket vendors at the entrance to most important temples also act as the Appropriate Clothes Police. Both men and women must have their shoulders covered and their legs covered to at least below the knees. Given that none of the males in our family even brought long pants with them, they found themselves in these becoming sarongs. Nice.