Friday 6th February 2026

Angurukarawalla Temple : St. Mary’s Church : Fish Market : St. Stephen’s Anglican Church

Regrettably, we had another delay on the flight to Colombo, sat on the plane, not going anywhere. The funny thing  that makes me smile when I look back is that when we eventually were airborne, they served us dinner with wine at 6.45am!

Our guide, Danesh, met us at the airport just before noon and took us to our transit hotel. He arranged to meet us a short while later.

After a hot shower and a change of clothes, we popped up to the roof of the hotel to see the view.  It was a windy day and the Sri Lankan flag was flying proudly.

The flag represents many things but basically it means unity and cultural history.

Danesh arrived and was quite sure that our friends were still in their room as he hadn’t met them.  “Oh no” we replied, “Pete and Anne would have been out exploring hours ago” we insisted.

 

Our guide seemed a little surprised. As you know, many folk are afraid of venturing out alone in a foreign country.

Well, we are amongst those that insist we go out amongst the people, see the real country and learn about the culture.  No perimeter fences for us!

The three of us set off to the Angurukarawalla Temple in the eight-seated minibus that we had arranged.

Noticing statues of both Buddha and Ganesh on the dashboard, I asked Danesh if he was a Buddhist or a Hindu.  He replied “Ma’am I am a Christian”.

He continued to tell us that he attends church every Sunday and Wednesday. Negombo is indeed, Sri Lanka’s Christian town.

We hadn’t expected to go anywhere today with our driver as according to our itinerary it was a free day.  Highlights of the city such as Hamilton Canal, sunset at the beach were suggested on our information list and of course we had done our homework, plenty of research as usual.

As we were quite tired from the journey, which ended up being 27 hours, we were very happy that Danesh had offered to take us on a little tour.

He suggested the canal and perhaps a boat ride and we added the temple.

The temple was stunning.  After removing our shoes we stepped over the stone called sandakada pahana, also known as a moonstone.  It was the first of many that we would see throughout the coming days.

The intricately carved stone slab symbolises samsara in Sri Lankan Buddhist architecture.  Samsara is the endless repetition of life and death until nirvana is eventually reached. Samsara is a Sanskrit word and translates as ‘wandering though’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The temple’s interior has a corridor around its perimeter decorated with colourful frescos and statues.

This leads to rooms with more statues and a stunning depiction of a reclining Buddha.

Back in the grounds we saw a young monk wearing bright saffron robes with a much older monk in burgundy robes wandering barefoot.

Our next stop was the Neo Classical St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church.

Christianity began to spread in the country with the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century. However, there is some evidence that a few Christian groups existed before this time.

Today it is one of the country’s minority religions with around just 8% of the population being Christians.  The majority of the population, some 70%, are Buddhists.

The local fish market on the beaches of the Indian Ocean is a popular tourist sight.  It is, of course, best visited early in the morning when the multitude of fishermen return to shore with their fresh catches.

Late afternoon was, however, our only opportunity.  Even though the majority  of the stalls had closed for the day, there was still enough to make it worth a visit.

Herons were on the deserted wooden stalls eating leftover titbits.  The sleeping, scruffy, skinny dogs must have had their fill earlier in the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thousands of tiny fish were spread out on matting on the beach drying out, pairs of women sat together occasionally getting up to turn the fish. It had started to drizzle which obviously didn’t help.

A few customers were looking around, perhaps for a bargain at that time of day.  One man had a small queue, he expertly and rapidly cut and filleted fish using a huge tree trunk as his chopping board. He constantly sprayed the tree trunk with water and scraped the waste into a bucket. It was interesting to watch him.

Danesh then took us to Negombo Lagoon, but the weather wasn’t good so we declined the chance of a boat ride.

Our guide had a couple of umbrellas in the minibus which we needed at our next stop.

St. Stephens is an Anglican church which was consecrated in 1880. It was built in the gothic revival architectural style.

There is also a pre-school on the same site.

 

 

Close by is the city’s prison. Many women were waiting for visiting hours. A number of small stalls sold a multitude of items that the women were purchasing, no doubt to take to their men-folk.

Back at the hotel, we met up with our friends for drinks, dinner and to swap news about our day!

 

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