CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 672 km round trip from Kandy - roughly 13 h 27 in the saddle. On the way it passes Peak Wilderness Protected Area, Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications and back through Peak Wilderness Protected Area. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,100 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Kandy sits in a bowl of hills in the middle of Sri Lanka, about five hundred metres above the sea, with a small artificial lake in the middle and the roofs of the Temple of the Tooth at its edge. The city was the last capital of the Sinhalese kings, who held out in the hills against the Portuguese, Dutch and then British for more than two centuries, until the British took it in 1815. The relic that gave the place its sanctity, a tooth said to be that of the Buddha, was brought to the island in the fourth century and passed from capital to capital, and has been kept in Kandy for centuries. The Sri Dalada Maligawa, its home, is white, gold-roofed and surrounded by a moat, and the evening drum ritual, with conch shells and chanting, is a moving thing to watch.
Read the complete Sacred City of Kandy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacred City of Kandy is where the day begins. Next is Peak Wilderness Protected Area.
At the heart of Sri Lanka's hill country rises a sharp cone of rock that Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians all hold sacred. Sri Pada, known to many as Adam's Peak, stands at 2,243 metres, and on its summit is a large depression in the rock shaped like a footprint. For Buddhists it is the footprint of the Buddha; for Hindus, of Shiva; for Muslims and some Christians, of Adam. The mountain lies within the Peak Wilderness Protected Area, a large expanse of montane forest that is part of the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka World Heritage site, listed in 2010.
Read the complete Peak Wilderness Protected Area write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Peak Wilderness Protected Area comes up about 89 km into the recorded legs. Next is Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications.
Galle Fort is one of those places where a wall tells you everything. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to build here, in 1588, but the Dutch, who took the town in 1640, turned it into the formidable stone fortress you see today, with bastions facing the Indian Ocean and a street grid laid out in the European manner. The ramparts run for nearly three kilometres around a small peninsula, and you can walk the whole circuit in an hour or two, looking down on the surf on one side and the red-tiled roofs on the other. A lighthouse, a Dutch Reformed church with grave slabs on its floor, and a clock tower give the town its landmarks.
Read the complete Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 336 km into the recorded legs you reach Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications. Next is back through Peak Wilderness Protected Area.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Peak Wilderness Protected Area write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Peak Wilderness Protected Area, late in the day. Next is Sacred City of Kandy.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacred City of Kandy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Sacred City of Kandy. That is the ride.
Sacred City of Kandy → Peak Wilderness Protected Area is 89 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Peak Wilderness Protected Area → Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications is 247 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications → back through Peak Wilderness Protected Area is 240 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Peak Wilderness Protected Area → Sacred City of Kandy is 96 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.