Have you guys heard about a village located in the valley of Loggal oya where they do not have a road even and they have to climb an abyss to get to the nearest city (Madulsima) for 3 hours. Yes still our fellow citizens do live in the dark where even some of the basic facilities are not available. The sun is seen only at 9am and it vanishes in few hours at around 3pm, even when the sun could be seen the thick layer of mist covers it off and deprive them with their right to enjoy the sunlight. And yet these 200 odd people have managed to survive happily despite all of their troubles. After some recent media programs these people have got some hope and they are looking forward for a brighter future.

I was used to travel from Colombo to Pollonnaruwa by morning train (Udaya dewi/උදය දේවී) in one part of my life and accidently noticed an isolated mountain just passed Konwewa (කෝන් වැව) station. I could notice this mountain till I pass Moragollagama (මොරගොල්ලාගම) station. As it was large and situated on a surrounding flat ground, aroused my curiosity and found to have it as the longest isolated mountain of Sri Lanka-Galgiriya mountain.

When I first stepped in to Monaragala I planned to visit all four waterfalls listed under Monaragala district and suddenly one waterfall seemed to be a mystery and was bit of a challenge considering its location called Udavadiya. I was posted to Devathura to cover up another colleague’s duty for about one month and during that period I got some information from the local population about this village called Udawadiya.

The coming weekend was Vesak holidays and there would be plenty of free food everywhere waiting for me to have a taste. So I decided to hang around Maha oya and experience the village style of celebrating Vesak though my main objective was visiting few archaeology sites. I got together with my batch mate Chanaka and arrived at Maha oya leisurely at around 9am and after having some breakfast we wanted to visit one of the Mega irrigation projects which was underway.

We wanted to do a complete Jaffna tour within three days. Before plan this trip I read Sri’s Jaffna and Delft report (The Land of Horses-Delft & re-awakening Jaffna) which was the most recent updates of Jaffna in Lakdasun especially about Delft Island. Then I went through Kristy’s reports of Jaffna (Jaffna-Micro Attractions and which gives a good idea about rare places there. Zoysa’s Jaffna report (On the A9 Road to Jaffna 2010) also helped me to know about Vallipuram and VVT. I knew about Fort Hammenheil from Chandanie’s report (Fort Hammenheil-a prison in the middle of the ocean)

It was a period of mixed weather and I had been away from temples and Archeology sites for a while so decided to have a small tour around Padiyathalawa and Maha oya region on a weekend. Visiting archeology sites and temples is not an easy task since there are many issues lately that cause significant problems and it’s essential to win the trust of the head priests these days otherwise you would be labeled as a “Nidan hora” and be arrested by the 119 squad. Despite all the barriers I decided continue on my quest so on a Saturday I headed towards Padiyathalawa and took a bus towards Wahawa to start things off.

Pollonnaruwa is rich of archeological sites. There are rare places than our popular visits. I got to know about some of these places by a book and it made my visit at these sites. I did this travelling intermittently when I found a free time as well as a friend(s) to travel with me. Therefore I can’t say exact number of days need to cover all these places.

So here I’m again with the continuation of my fairy tale from breath-taking Meemure and hope you’ve read it and enjoyed it as much as I did (Jaunting off to the Most Beautiful Village on Earth – Meemure). I left you guys at Hunnasgiriya after our morning snack of sponge cake, banana and what keeps me going Coffee… We had to wait at Hunnasgiriya for a Mahiyanganaya bus longer than I liked due to 25 April being a Poya day.

““Once upon a time, there was this fella who happened to come across this remarkable word and it stuck very deep in his mind. Everyone who’d either been there or heard about spoke very highly of her and this fella kept dreaming about it all the time. He didn’t have the means or the resources to visit her then and dream was the only option he was left with which he was very good at. On top of everything, Meemure wasn’t ready to welcome him just yet.

We reached Ampara around 1.00 pm. We had to pick our two friends from Dayata Kirula exhibition stall. Therefore, we spent 1 or 2 hours visiting the exhibition. Next, 8 of us went to the friend’s place where we were spending the night. It was extremely very difficult to book a hotel or a government circuit bungalow as it was the Dayata Kirula exhibition period.

රාත්රිටය පිලියන්දල ගත කලෙමු. පසු දින උදයේ ලබුනෝරුව බලා පිටත් විය. එදින දිවා ආහාරය ඉබ්බන්කටුව ජලාශය අසලදී ගත් අප ලබුනෝරුවට ළඟවනවිට සවස් වී තිබුනි. රිටිගල කඳු පාමුල පිහිටි ලබුනෝරුව ආරණ්ය සේනාසනය ඉතා නිස්කලංක ස්ථානයක් වන අතර ඊට මද දුරක් ඈතින් පිහිටා ඇති මූරියන්කඩවල වැව රිටිගල කන්දත් සමග දර්ශනීය දසුනක් මවාපායි

This was my 3rd visit to Meemure and this was after 6 years of the 2nd visit. When I had my first visit in 2004, it was the time that Meemure was getting popular with ‘සූරිය අරණ’ film. In those days it was a village which was hardly developed. That means there was only a single vehicle to the entire village and we could see people carrying goods by ‘තවලම’.