Sri Lanka’s Vesak Festival

For two days in mid May each year, Sri Lanka turns into a be-laterned island of colour and food, music and gifts. Vesak is a wonderful Buddhist festival that commemorates the birth, enlightenment and passing away (parinivarna) of Gautama Buddha. It’s observed at the full moon of the lunar month Vesakha, which generally falls in early May. In Sri Lanka, where about 70% of the population are Buddhist, it’s a public holiday and celebrated with elaborate decorations, lighting, processions, songs and charitable events.

If you happen to be in Sri Lanka at such a fortuitous time then you’ll see long queues forming on the roadside as you pass through the verdant countryside. People queue up for food on offer: ice cream, tea, juice, sandwiches, or sago pudding (a warm drink not unlike rice-pudding and very good for you). Flowers are also given out, especially the national flower, the blue waterlily  passed out for free in pleasing bunches by generous celebrants.

It is also a time to give alms to the less fortunate and to school-children. People donate what they can, and it seems the whole island joins in, even those from other faiths: Hindus, Christians and Muslims alike.

The streets and towns are bedecked with lights and lanterns (vesak lanterns), streamers and pandals. These colourful, mural-like pandals, called Vesak Pandals or Vesak Thoran, are grand illuminated structures portraying stories from the Jataka tales, a collection of Buddhist stories that narrate the past lives of the Buddha.

May is Sri Lanka’s shoulder season and a great time to visit, less busy than high season and with gorgeous temperatures, and the main sites all to yourself.