Photographing inside the Weherahena Poorwarama Rajamaha Viharaya temple, Matara

This is one of those really curious temples that you can find in different places around Sri Lanka - hundreds of panels or cartoons depicting the life of Buddha in all its complexity - but illustrated in a form that people with little education can still grasp. There are so many stories - but as you can see from the twin picture - that I call heaven and hell, the message is clear. Behave, and you are 'in the clouds'.
'If you don't, well, it looks like you suffer some sort of painful compulsory foot surgery. Most of the shots here were triple exposures and processed using Aurora HDR Pro using a 'realistic' HDR preset.

View looking down from the top of the statue

Buddha's footprint
Seems he was a bit flatfooted?

Underneath the Buddha platform there are many more cartoons lining the sticky finger-stained walls of the tunnels running underground.
Some also show pictures of the people whose money has been used to paint the illustrations.

Heaven and hell?

Topless Yoga perhaps?
I don't get the chicken feet...

Although this place was only opened to the public in the late 70s it's illustrations have faded badly. Some of the steps towards to top deck of the four-story Buddha look as though the builders just ran out of money before it was finished: hand rails are missing, there are piles of building refuse that have petrified into solid piles of junk on the roof, and the concrete floor underfoot is lumpy and unfinished. Thankfully the cartoons in this entrance hall have been repainted recently so look as colourful as they might have done when I first visited back in 1983.