WOX Travel Contest | Week 19 | A Trip to Koneshwaram - Trincomalee

Hello my dear friends. I hope all my friends are fine. So today I am going to take you with me to tell you some details about a place where I started with passion. Before all that, I express my heartfelt gratitude to @o1eh for giving us the opportunity to share this kind of experience. Ok then let's move to the story.

In the year 2021, I was able to visit the Trincomalee. Trincomalee is a district located in the eastern province of Sri Lanka. Mainly Muslims and Tamils live in this area and Sinhalese are also a minority. Trincomalee is an area of historical and archaeological value. Tourists also visit this area because it has a beautiful beach. So guys, I joined this trip with my friend very willingly. There we stayed at a tourists house in Trincomalee. On the first day we chose to go to Koneshwaram temple which has historical value. This is located inside the Fort Frederick which has built during the dutch ruling period. I was very curious to visit this place, so we finished the breakfast and left the place where we stayed at 8 a.m. Since the place was about 2 kilometer away from where we were staying, we started the journey on foot. After walking for about twenty minutes, we entered inside the fort.

The middle road between the old buildings of the fort is a very peaceful road with shade. While traveling on that road and approaching the temple, there are rows of stalls, selling offerings and other various items like foods, cloths, toys, statues on both sides of the road.

This temple is situated on a big rock next to the sea. As soon as you enter this temple which dedicated to Lord Shiva, you will see a huge statue of Shiva, built on the rock.

Mainly Hindu devotees perform pooja and worships at this place, but people of other religions also visit this place. Although a temple dedicated to Lord Shiva, statues of other deities such as Lord Gana, Lord Parvathi are also found here.

The history of this place goes back to 400BC as mentioned in the plaques at that place. The earliest written evidence of this temple is found in the famous books "Ramayanaya" and "Mahabaratha". There are various legends associated with this temple. I will tell you one story as learned at that place. According to the famous book "Ramayanaya", king Ravana, who was the ruler of Sri Lanka at that time, visited this place and offered sacrifices along with his mother. With the time, King Ravana's mother fell ill and could not come to this place. The powerful king Ravana tried to take this rock with temple away from this place with his sword, to worship her. But seeing this, Lord Shiva threw down his sword and stopped this. There a part of the rock has cut and the sword fell in to the sea. Even today, there is a place in the temple that is believed to be the place where the sword fell. That place is called as Ravana cut.

Although this place reached the point of destruction due to various reasons over time, the dutch and British who invaded Sri Lanka have done restoration work. However, this place is very beautiful and anyone who goes to this place can see the sea very clearly.

"Thirukoneshwaram Ther Thiruvilah" can be called as the main festival of thus temple. This is done annually and is held for 22 days. We left the place before twelve as this place on top of a rock gets the best sun light when the sun is at it's peak. So guys, I hope you enjoyed reading about my trip and gained some additional knowledge. I hope to tell you about another travel story and I say goodbye for now. Finally I invite @saku49539 @senehasa @sudaraka96 for this contest.