Esala Perahera in Kandy
Perahera is the largest Buddhist festival held in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Thousands of musicians, dancer and dozens of elephants are participating in the cca. 4 hour long festival, which is held annually in Kandy. The whole festival lasts for 10 days when the tooth relic of Buddha is taken around in the town to show it for the people. The sound of whistles and drums makes the sense of festival where people are holding burning charcoal in small cages at the end of a long red pole to light the procession. The people carrying the burning poles have a hard duty as they should focus on the people and elephants of the procession and also should take case of themselves as the burning pieces are falling down. Along the procession route there are stations, where people may receive help to refill their steel-baskets joint to the end of the pole, with charcoal. The people carrying the burning poles are protecting their heads and faces with red kerchief.
Taking picture of a festival is always challenging so I was prepared when I put together my gears. I took a wide zoom and telephoto zoom lenses and also a flash, because the festival started after getting dark and we reserved some seats near to the route of the festival. I wanted to take some wide pictures of the dancers and also the elephants that are decorated with colourful covers and also with small lights. However, when I saw the seats and the thick walls of the corridor where the windows were separated by wide part of walls, I realized that it would be more challenging to take pictures than I had expected. Anyhow, we had seats in the first row, which provides a great opportunity not only having the best view but also I could use the thick wall in front of us to put on it my gears.
We took the seats more than 2 hours earlier because the street and also the corridor was so crowded that it would have been hard to move a bit later on. The festival was fascinating where the different dancing groups were changing. The successive dancing groups were interrupted by elephants that were decorated by different colourful covers with small lamps. The major attraction was a large elephant decorated with golden cover and having a small shrine on his back, which contains the relic of Buddha’s’ tooth. When the giant elephant passed in front of us carrying the relic, people stood up and whispered some words. From the corridor we saw a slice of the procession but having a very good opportunity to take some candid portrait of the participants of the festival.
