For ten nights each year, elephants hung with lights, whip-crackers, fire dancers and Kandyan drummers parade through Kandy in honour of the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha — the Esala Perahera.
Photo: Daniel Liabeuf, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Sri Lanka’s entry in this atlas is the Esala Perahera of Kandy, the procession held every year for the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha, which is kept in the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988. Its dates are fixed each year by astrologers, and the grand final procession is usually held on the full moon of Nikini.
Esala Perahera
For ten nights the Sacred Tooth Relic’s casket is paraded through Kandy on the back of a great tusker, preceded by whip-crackers and fire dancers, Kandyan drummers and elephants in glittering caparisons, until the festival ends with a water-cutting ceremony in the Mahaweli River.
July – August 2027Approximate window