We started around 4.30 am from Kolonnawa, had our Breakfast closer to Deraniyagala. We had bought all our requirements on the previous day so we did not have any problems in the morning. We were at the Dik elikanda Primary School junction by 9.am; We got down from there and asked our Driver to meet us at Nallathanni following morning. We were at the Trail head by 10am..

The place is “රන්මසු උයන” (Ranmasu Uyana) This had been built in the 10th century according “වෙස්සගිරිය” (vessagiriya) inscription of Mahinda IV this is the place where Prince Saliya (son of King Dutugmunu) met Asokamala. This was their royal baths with separate chambers for the royals.

With that we remembered that there was a news article in Defence.lk that SL Navy has started Whale & Dolphin watching cruises in Galle and Trincomalee recently. I have been to Trincomalee in 2003 during the peace talks and went to Muttur by ferry (named Seruwila 2). It was about one hour journey across the harbor and there were many things to visit. So we decided to get this arranged

Visiting ritigala has been on the cards for a long time now and the closest I got was a planned trip last August but had to cancel it at the last moment due to unavoidable circumstances. Yapahuwa too has been lingering in my mind for some time but never materialized. Due to the above reasons my initial idea was to do a 2 day trip but for that too work commitments got in the way and on the ‘thaipongal’ weekend on Saturday I hastily decided to do a one day trip the next day(Sunday) to visit the above places which I’ve never been to.

Hiyare Forest reserve is located just 18 km (about half an hour’s drive) Galle town. The 55 acre reservoir was built in 1911 to supply water to the Galle city and was only decommissioned in 2002. In 2003 the reservoir and 600 acres of the surrounding low country tropical rainforest was turned over to the Municipal Council of Galle.

We chose Madu-Mannar as the destination for our year-end office trip after reading a number of trip reports on Lakdasun. We started form the suburbs of Colombo at about 12.30 in the night/morning as we had only two days to explore all interesting places that had been discussed in those reports. The crew was forty and we travelled in a 55-seater Ashok Leyland bus. As we started early, we reached Medawachchiya Rest House by 5.30 am and refreshed ourselves with a cup of tea. (Prior arrangements made to have tea so early!)

We had to go to Kandy for a “bana” and an “arms giving” and since the”bana” was on Saturday night I made a plan and went on Friday night and reached Kandy at 11.45 pm and stayed at my Sister in law’s place in Katugastota . The following day I started alone at 5.30 am as my wife and daughter was more keen on shopping at the city centre and went via Theldeniya and Digana and arrived at Deanston at around 7 am.

I have a dream to visit Uda-Maliboda, ඇලි හත (Seven Waterfalls) for quite a long time. Finally with some of my friends we decided to do it in beginning of the year 2012. Our objective is to visit all the seven waterfalls without a guide and also explore the area. In the early morning at 5.00 AM we started the journey from Kiribathgoda by hired van. At around 9.30 AM we reached Uda-Maliboda. From there we had our breakfast and started the hike near the Naya Ganga.

It was about 7.30am when we started our journey from Kaduwela and our only stop was for breakfast past Avissawella. The scenery changed after the turn off at dehiowita, it was a gradual ascend with the not so good road conditions giving us ample time to admire the beauty of mother nature.

In 2010 couple of Lakdasun members lead by Priyanjan participated in Pada Yatra. As usual the resulting discussions in the forum provided every little bit of information one would need regarding the cultural event as well as the walk. In 2011 Priyanjan planned his North to South excursion along the full Pada Yatra route all the way from Jaffna. I couldn’t have got a better opprtunity to do this walk than joining Priyanjan at Okanda to do the last stretch!

We started our journey on 11th December around 5.00pm from Colombo. First day our destination was Laxapana Circuit Bungalow and we reached there by 11.00 pm with several stops in between; several security checkups were there since we were entering in to a high security zone and War was at peak during that time.

This year annual office trip was planned to Sigiriya in November. Luckily it was the season for ballooning. When I mentioned the possibility of hot air ballooning to the trip organizers they managed to negotiate a bulk discount of 50% with one of the operator called Air Magic. It was still expensive but we thought “worth doing” at LKR 9000 per person!