Peradeniya Botanical Gardens @ Kandy

With not so much information to work with I picked out the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens as my first excursion around Kandy. It's located 8km to the west of Kandy and takes about 15 minutes to get to in a rickshaw, admission is 1500 rupees (10 usd) for foreigners and 50 rupees for locals. As I waited in line to buy my ticket, watching the locals fork over less then a 20th of what I was paying was slightly painful.

Inside the park walking around was slightly boring at first, just a bunch of  plants and trees in a garden, but eventually a couple things got my interest. You can find an occasional pack of monkeys, bats, a cow or two, and some other weird animals scattered about the garden; although I'm not a vegetation enthusiast, there was still a couple trees which actually stood out for me. On the very north side of the park there is a bridge you can walk out on which has an excellent view of the river which circumvents the park, from here you can see the view of the surrounding area or just watch some locals bath in the river.



 

Bats 

Bridge from far away

View from the bridge

Near the end of my tour of the park I ran into a sight which surprised me. On one section of the path were some pine tree looking things which for whatever reason grew in a zigzag pattern toward the sky. My boss had posted a picture of these exact trees on wechat one week earlier during his trip to Sri Lanka, without planning on it I managed to retrace his steps to this exact spot.

Zigzag trees

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