Princess Royal pays her respects at Sri Lankan Buddhist temple

The Princess Royal’s helicopter followed local protocol when it flew her to a Sri Lankan Buddhist temple – and avoided landing on a cricket wicket.

Anne travelled to the ancient place of worship in the central city of Kandy to pay her respects at the site, which is home to a tooth Buddhists believe is from their deity.

As the helicopter, provided by the Sri Lankan government, swooped down onto the Asgiriya Police cricket pitch, it was guided to a large H for helipad sign on the ground by an aircraft marshaller.

The princess, accompanied by her husband Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, is midway through a three-day visit to Sri Lanka, a country where cricket is hugely popular.

Her official car also kept off the wicket and whisked her a short distance to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, Sri Lanka’s most significant Buddhist Temple.

Wearing white as a mark of respect and removing her shoes, like all visitors, the princess was given a plate of jasmine flowers by a Buddhist cleric and ushered into an inner sanctum, reserved for the temple’s most important guests, to make her offering to the relic in private.

The tooth is said to be the Buddha’s left canine and is kept within seven caskets and paraded through the streets of Kandy every five years during a 10-day spectacle.

The temple attracts visitors from across the globe and before the pandemic, 100,000 people regularly flocked to the site over a weekend with numbers returning to these levels.