Don't forget your umbrella or your rain jacket.
You're watching Vagabrothers, and this is Sri Lanka.
I'm Alex. I'm Marko, and we're the Vagabrothers,
brothers, vagabonds, and your go-to guides for travel tips,
inspiration, and vlogs on YouTube.
In this series, we're discovering the best of Sri Lanka:
ancient cities,
stunning nature,
rich culture, and delicious food.
Good morning everybody.
Welcome back to Vagabrothers. I'm Alex.
I'm Marko, and today is another beautiful day exploring Sri Lanka.
What do we have on the schedule?
Well right now we're at the beautiful Amaya Lake Hotel.
We've been up here exploring the cultural triangle for the last couple days.
Today we're going to Kandy, a cultural heart of Sri Lanka,
and on the way, we're going to make some really cool stops.
Our bus is leaving right now.
Come with us Let's go.
All right ladies and gentlemen, well to start things off today,
we are going to learn a little bit about the relationship that Sri Lanka has with spices.
It's got an incredible climate, this jungle climate,
that is actually the homeland of many of the world's most precious spices, including cinnamon.
Sri Lanka actually is the exporter of over
90% of the world's cinnamon, and it's where cinnamon comes from.
So to learn a little bit more
about Sri Lanka and its relationship to the spice trade,
we've come to Ranweli 99 Spice Garden,
and we're going to get a tour to learn more about the spices.
This is vanilla, pure vanilla extract,
which comes from the vanilla plant,
from the leaf right here.
You know tiger balm you people use?
Yeah, menthol. But this is no menthol...
cardamom, clove, ginger, cinnamon, coriander, coconut - together a paste.
I show how to use little cream
This is no menthol.
Oh my god, you have magical hands.
It's so crazy how pepper, something that we have on our dinner tables
every single night, is actually an import for most of the western world.
Europe really only had the onion and garlic native to the continent, and everything else was imported.
That's nutmeg?
This is cinnamon; it grows as a bark on a tree that's native to here in Sri Lanka.
It's been popular since ancient times.
The ancient Egyptians used it in the embalming process.
It was later an aphrodisiac, and the Romans were obsessed.
But nobody in the west knew where it came from,
that is except for the Arabs who arrived here in the seventh century,
set up trading posts, and monopolized the trade by bringing it by sea to Europe.
In order to throw Europeans off the scent of where it came from, they made up tall tales,
including one that they said it came from mythically large birds
that used it to build their nests,
and the only way to get this down from their nest was by putting a big chunk of
oxen at the bottom.
The birds would pick it up, put in their nest;
the nest would fall down, and the Arabs would collect the cinnamon.
That of course was false,
but it was tall tales like that that allowed the Arabs to maintain
a monopoly on the cinnamon trade for centuries,
that is until the Portuguese found a way to get here by sea.
The Portuguese outmaneuvered the Arabs by sailing around the tip of Africa to arrive in Sri Lanka,
but they in turn were outmaneuvered by the Dutch and then the British.
The one thing all of these colonizers shared in common
was that they exported almost everything imaginable back to Europe and made a fortune in the process:
wild Indigo,
cardamom, ginger,
sandalwood, mustard oil,
ivory, coral, and seven different types of cinnamon,
and in the process they conquered almost the entire island,
that is except for the Kingdom of Kin.
Thank you
Now we've kind of finished our tour of the spice garden,
and we're having a little demonstration.
They're cooking some okra with a lot of different spices
that we just learned about.
But first things first, having a little bit of tea.
It's ginger tea.
It's got some cinnamon in there, some cardamom,
some cloves,
really, really tasty, really good for you.
It's good for your throat.
As someone who loves cooking and who loves knowing where their food comes from,
this is an incredible experience because if you ever try to cook curry at the very best,
you can just usually buy curry powder, which itself is a combination of about five different spices.
It's really cool to come here and see all those components
spices that make up curry powder and then to make a curry from it.
It's actually quite tasty, and it just gives you a little bit more perspective of where that flavor comes from.
That is good.
Right now we are inside the store; we're checking out all the Ayurvedic
treatments that they have, all the different tonics.
This one's perfect
for living in our modern western world
where FOMO dominates and where there's just too much stuff to do and not enough time.
This is the tonic for nervous breakdown.
Like we've said, as YouTubers, we're all avoiding burnout.
I'm going to buy a bottle of this tonic for nervous breakdown--- two little caps
twice a week and easy.
I got incense galore.
Always got to be burning incense in the house.
I did two lotus because I love lotus.
They're beautiful, and they smell delicious...
cinnamon because I feel like cinnamon is a great incense
and scent to have around during Christmas and the holidays, and
then I did sandalwood because that's my all-time favorite, and
then I got some yoga oil,
which I think all of us went for it, which I'm really excited to try.
It's just really good for your back and your body and your muscles and all that good stuff.
And then I got the herbal balm which is minty. It's a natural tiger balm.
After a couple of hours of driving,
we have arrived to the city Kandy,
spelt with a "k" and not with a "c,"
but pronounced like the confectionary.
It's on a lake. It's supposed to be very beautiful.
It's the cultural capital of Sri Lanka, and
we're going to go check out the palace.
It's supposed to be very beautiful.
There're really cool artifacts.
Also, it's probably going to start pissing rain in less than a minute or two.
Okay, everybody well, unfortunately it is starting to rain,
and that's because Sri Lanka is a tropical climate.
We've actually been super lucky so far with the weather,
but the second monsoon season is starting up,
starting to ramp up, and this rain is really starting to come down.
So right when we walked into the Temple of the Sacred Tooth,
it's really started raining.
Don't forget your umbrella or your rain jacket.
Kandy is considered the cultural capital of Sri Lanka,
and that's because of this right behind us.
Inside this building is the Buddha's Tooth,
and this is considered extremely holy
because it's the place where all of Buddha's teachings passed touching that tooth.
It's been in this place for over 300 years.
It's one of the most important religious pilgrimage sites in the entire country.
It was the capital of the Kingdom of Kandy, which during the
15th and 16th century was where the cultural and political center
of Sri Lanka was as the island was invaded by colonial powers.
This was the last independent kingdom of Sri Lanka.
It was independent until 1815,
and it was, for that reason, a very important place in all of Sri Lanka.
It's also an extremely beautiful building.
You can tell that pilgrims come here from across the country to pay their homage to the Lord Buddha.
So we're going to do a little bit of homage paying, a little bit of pilgrimage, and maybe if we're lucky
snap a photo or two.
We have been exploring the Temple Palace complex for about an hour now,
extremely beautiful, very ornate, lots of very intricate little details,
even the wood carvings on the pillars of this building, particularly impressive.
This is a very beautiful part of the island.
We're surrounded by these big rolling hills of jungle,
and here in Kandy there's a lake.
There's all these beautiful houses around it,
and this shrine is actually inside the Royal Palace because in order to be the king of
Sri Lanka, you had to be in possession of the Buddhist Tooth.
The tooth is inside.
We can't film it because it's encased in seven
Russian dolls almost but of gold, and it's on the inside.
It's just a very serene peaceful place and
compared to Colombo, just night and day.
The vibe here is way more chill.
The weather is quite literally more chill.
The temperature is cooler. It's fresher. The air is cleaner.
We've had this big storm roll through with
thunder and lightning and torrential downpour,
and then it's gone, and that air is fresh and clean.
I think that coming here.. coming to Kandy, it's been on the list.
And I think that now that we've experienced the Temple of the Tooth relic and Palace,
I think it's time to head out, check out what's going on on the streets.
We have left the temple, and we've come over to the lake.
Kandy is built around a central lake,
and we're going to take a little boat ride
just to get a better feel for the city.
It's very beautiful, very scenic.
It's nice to be out on the water instead of on the shore.
There's a lot of bird life,
lots of little tuk-tuks whipping around.
it's rained and now it's kind of the calm after the storm,
and you can see why this is such a desirable place to be.
The temperature is cooler. It's lush; it's green.
It's verdant and it's definitely my favorite place so far that we've visited on this trip.
Kinda reminds me of a cross between Thailand because of the red roofs
with Hanoi because the lake out in the capital of Vietnam
But it's a very different vibe from Colombo.
This is the gateway to the hill country.
Tomorrow we're going to be diving into the hill country,
and you'll see what that means.
Because of the religious importance of the temple and the palace,
there're no bars or discotheques in the immediate area,
so it's a very, very quiet peaceful place.
I really like it.
I like that if you have a hustle and bustle of a city, but right in the center
you have a really calming lake in between everything, and
it's nice to have a busy city but then be able to escape that here or at a temple.
And so I like that balance.
We've now completed our scenic boat ride,
and now we're going to get something to eat. Food time.
It's dinner time and we're going to try some local Sri Lankan specialities.
First dish we're going to try is egg hoppers, which I love.
it's kind of like a rabbit in an egg.
Bad joke. And we're going to try some ho kottu roti, which I personally love.
Are you hungry? I'm very hungry,
and I heard the street food here is great.
Let's eat. Let's munch.
The first course has been served. We have
egg hoppers and we have kottu roti.
The kottu roti is kind of like a fried rice, but instead of rice,
they're using chopped up bits of roti, which is like an Indian style flatbread.
And then the egg hopper is a mixture of corn and rice flour,
a little bit of coconut milk, and then it's placed into this circular
pan/bowl thing where it gets.. it's really crispy
around the edges, and then they just chuck an egg in the middle and you go for it.
I've never had an egg hopper.
I tried the kottu roti the other day, and it was delicious.
This is the first meal we've had in a local's restaurant.
I'm very happy that we're here.
Good? Umm, yeah. That's good.
Definitely has a kick to it.
Spicy?
But I love spice, and it's good.
Dinner was delicious. We made new friends. Thank you very much
Good very good. Yeah, the roti was on point.
Yeah, but that is the end of our episode here in Kandy.
We've had a super fun day exploring.
Hope you've enjoyed the video.
If you did, please give it a thumbs- up. Thumbs-up?
Yeah, he liked it.
Well stay tuned.
Tomorrow we're going to be exploring the Hill Country.
We're going on one of the most scenic train rides in the world.
It's going to be an awesome trip. So stay tuned for that.
Subscribe to Vagabrothers for more travel videos.
And in the meantime, stay curious, keep exploring,
and we'll see you guys on the road.
Peace
Thank you