Dowa Raja Maha Viharaya

The road from Badulla to Bandarawela runs through a small village called Dowa, high in the mountains of Uva. On one side the rock face opens, and set into it is a Buddha — shoulders, robe, one raised hand, and the rest still cliff. It was never finished. The style is Mahayana, unusual on this island, and it is the thing everyone remembers about the place.

The temple is about two thousand years old. It was called Kumbaltissa Ariyagala Vehera then, after the chief priest who sheltered King Walagamba while he was in hiding. The king turned the cave into a temple and began the carving. He did not complete it. The work was taken up again more than a thousand years later under the Kandyan kings, who finished the temple and left the figure exactly as they found it.

The village takes its name from the ring of mountains that encloses it, and the river that crosses the plateau. Colombo is 210 km to the west, Kandy 120 km to the north. It has been a protected monument since 1996. The traffic to Bandarawela goes past it all day.