Ridiyagama Safari Park was declared open in March 2016. Construction of the project started in 2008 and first phase was completed at a cost of Rs.2,600 Million and opened for public on 28.03.2016.

Kalinga Island is located in the center of Mahaweli River at the boarder of the Wasgamuwa NP & it consists of 7 islands. The main island harbours ruins of a forgotten era. It’s said that princes of Kalinga sailed upstream along Mahaweli River to the interior of the country and this mini island was once believed to be their ship manufacturing yard.

So me, with 3 of my friends – Ashan, Chinthaka and Dinuka – packed our bags and departed to Nava maama’s place in Meemure on 20th April with cheerful minds. Much to our dismay, a heavy shower started in the evening of 20th, shattering all our dreams of making it to the summit. Nava maama casted a totally negative outlook of tomorrow’s proceedings, as it could be observed that streams of water sliding down the Western face of Lakegala, from where we are supposed to climb. Nevertheless we insisted on going as far as we could, and Nava maama had no other option but to agree J Next day we started the journey from Meemure with the guide introduced by him, Chanaka, and reached the base of the rocky surface after nearly a 5 hour struggle. It was clear to us that any attempt to proceed further would be suicidal. Such a venture would only result in consolidation of the already established opinion that Lakegala is a deadly peak. I am not going to further elaborate on our first attempt to climb Lakegala, since our second and the successful attempt also covers the same details up to this point. Only difference here was that the climb required extra energy due to forest patch being infested with leeches and rocky surface being extra slippery.

Ok, back to Runakanda. This is a part of Sinharaja actually but is now being proposed as a separate Forest Reserve. I hope this will get legalized soon as we’re fast losing our forest areas. Even Runakanda like many wet zone rain forests have been ravaged by the Walla Patta Hunters. According to villagers many outsider had come in gangs and stayed inside the forest living in makeshift shelters or caves chopping down Walla Patta trees and making loads of money. The FD and Police are in high alert even though the damage has already been done thus the reason why you shouldn’t venture into these areas on your own.

We heard that the FD is now distributing Walla Patta plants for commercial planting where they help with the chemicals to produce that specific bit of residue after 5 years. At the age of 8, the tree is good to cut down and harvest. Hopefully these will put a stop to the destruction of our virgin forests.

We were planning to use a car and a van for the trip, but when I contacted Ashan, he discouraged the car. So we exchanged the car to a cab.
The van was from a cab service and naturally came late. The cab went early and reached Fishing Hut by mid day enabling my sons and grandsons to have a dip in Battulu Oya before lunch.

It was an unplanned trip. We got Hayleys Holiday Bungalow for spend a weekend. this gave me the opportunity to visit Galle and the see the attractions around. We were able to visit Galle fort and Jungle beach during the trip.

Diyaluma (220m) is the second highest waterfall in Sri Lanka and its situated at Beragala-Wellawaya road. Turn right from the Beragala junction and proceed about 23km to the waterfall.

This story is relating with my day 01 article about the night at Telgamu oya. On the second day we left from telgamu oya to Mahiyanganaya via the huge forest. Once we came to the Mahiyanganaya we went to the Sorabora wewa which was very famous in Sri Lanka as it made by a giant called Bulatha.

There had been some discussions with Ashan, me and Nishan to do a Mega journey starting from Bambarella and reach KMP at Kalupahana then climb Thunhisgala and descend to Pallegama by exploring Duwili eli. Although I had been to Duwili Eli once from Etanwala, Thunhisgala was a dream for me. Ashan and Amila went for a two day hike to Thunhisgala but I couldn’t join them as I couldn’t take leave from my work place. So I missed their journey.

We stay at relatives house in Kaikawala. Next day morning we went to Riverston. We took bus to Raththota & from there we took a three wheel. First we went to Riverston & next to Sera Ella.

This is the highest fall in Sri Lanka and it is about 263m. This is the place that I personally liked to visit always. Actually I was there for 8 times from 2011 to now

Kabragala is a mountain in the Dolaosbage mountain range. It has the highest summit point in the range. Hiking Kabaragala became one of my ‘must do’ hike after seeing the Nadegura Documentary and Ashan’s Report. We planned several times and couldn’t do the hike due to bad weather.