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!)