Esala Perahera — Feast of the Sacred Tooth

The festival

For ten nights, Kandy, the former Royal Capital of Sri Lanka, became the theatre of one of the most sumptuous processes in Asia. L

Every evening, the procession grows: fire spitters, whippers, Kandian dancers, drums, drapes and dozens of capaçoned elephants march through torches; the most majestic Maligawa elephant carries the reliquary on his back (a copy of the Dent box).

The first five nights are those of the Kumbal Perahera, the next of the Randoli, until the final night — the most grandiose, with about fifty elephants and more than a thousand artists — before the ceremony of the cup of water on the Mahaweli River and the day procession that close the feast. The perahera merges a very ancient rite of call to rain to the guardian deities and the procession of the Dent instituted by the kings of Kandy.