This year was the best period for me to do the well-known “Paada Yathra” because I currently reside in Moneragala. Actually even before I thought of walking with the pilgrims this year my friends did ask me to join them and the answer was YES SURE (with a big smile). This was something I wanted to do for some time but free time was the major problem. Thanks to the long discussions in lakdasun and talking hours with people who had experienced this walk first hand, we were ready to walk the distance with the pilgrims and experience something that is worth a million.

This was my first naked eye view of the Kandy perahara. Despite many recommended that watching it in TV is better, I still though to just experience it. According, with the help of a friend in Kandy came to town at about 6.35 and parahara was scheduled to start by 6.50. By the time we arrived the city, all the streets were completely filled with people.

We started around 5.00 am on old new year day and arrived at Dambadeniya around 7.00 am. Our plan was to visit Dambadeniya Raja Maha Viharaya and the kingdom. But it was raining heavily and we gave up the idea andproceeded further and came to Panduwasnuwara around 8.30 am.

I have been living around Moneragala for few months and it seems I’m surrounded by heritage and nature. There is a place called Mayuragiri Raja Maha viharaya 2Km’s close to my quarters which I thought I have visited in 2009 but after seen NG’s post I understood that I have visited the Mayuragiri hermitage but not the temple. So on a peaceful day I decided to walk towards this temple.

As usual, this was another all-of-a-sudden-I-wanted-to-go trip. For some reason or the other, beginning of March, out of nowhere, I felt that I must go to Adam’s peak as soon as possible. I still have no idea how that notion came upon me but I was pretty much obsessed with it.

Our first stop for the day was at the “Nilavara – Bottomless Well”. It is a big opening on ground filled with clean water. It is said that the depth of this well is unknown. There had been 2 formal attempts to find out its depth; one by a team from the Jaffna University and the other by a team from an US University, but both teams could not find the bottom of it.

There is a boat from KKD to Delft at 10 am. But we were not going to be on that boat. Since we were on kind of an official visit we were privileged to have a special Navy boat waiting for us. It was a high speed ‘Water Jet’. Normally it takes around 1 hour for the boat ride to Delft. But the Water Jet flew over the sea completing the journey in less than 20 minutes.

Though the object village in the tale drama was situated at Uva province, the film location used by the producer was not far from us. Actually, it was located few kilometers off Narammala. The remote village where the community hall (Ambalama) existed was known as Karagahagedara. This is the story of how we explored the historical Ambalama at Karagahagedara.

After mountain climbing around Ella on the previous day I was clueless what to do on day 2 and 3 because my previous agenda was not feasible at this point. After discussing with my friend Priyanjan I decided to go to Hadapanagala Lake and end my day. That was the fixed plan for the day even when I left his premises. It was around 11am when I got in to a bus towards Wellawaya and the bus conductor came close to me to issue a ticket and suddenly a question popped out. “කන්දෙ විහාරෙ ගාවට යන්නෙ කොහොමද?”

During the past Matara was called “Mahathota”. The river running through Matara is ‘Nilwala River. There was a wide area across this river. Hence it was called “Mahathota” which means “The great ferry”. During the past Matara was called “Mahathota”. The river running through Matara is ‘Nilwala River. There was a wide area across this river. Hence it was called “Mahathota” which means “The great ferry”

fter returning from a trip to Orissa the Kalinga Kingdom of Emperor Asoka on the 17th May 2012, I had to attend meeting in Anuradhapura 19th Morning. To make the trip useful before travelling to Anuradhapura we planned that after having finished the meeting which took few hours, to spend the rest of the weekend visiting the uncommon sites in Anuradhapura not normally visited by an average pilgrim.

It was a day with mixed weather but I decided to go ahead early as possible since I had few places in mind and almost all were close by to Chilaw – Kurunegala main road. First destination was Munneshwaram which is about 3Km from Chilaw town and well known all around the island for its festivals. Fortunately it was not festival season this time of the year so I walked about peacefully in the kovil and I noticed that the new kovil has surrounded the old one completely