It has been almost a year since visiting Mannar and I was tempting to go there again, especially in the middle of the migration season. I have called Mr. Laurance, the owner of Four Tees Guest Inn, many times since the season begun, but couldn’t go there due to some concerns. This time I was very determined to go there and ask my friends to join me from about month a go.

Our journey started from around 4.30 p.m in and we proceeded directly to our destination Kalupana around 10.30p.m. Following day early morning we came to Kalupahana Junction and took a left turn towards the Bamabarakanda(Between 172 -173 km ). After proceeding about 4.5 km we had the 1st sight of the Bambarakanda fall at a distance.

Last week end I had opportunity to spend two days in tiny jungle hamlet in foot of the Knuckles Mountain Range. Here is that memorable story. We leave Kandy at 11.00 a.m. in the morning and reached our destination after four hour journey and our crew was 08.

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.

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!)

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!

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!

We started our journey from Hikkaduwa at about 4.30pm and reached to Kaduwela at about 7.30. We spent the night at our relation’s place. We left Kaduwela at 4.00am and headed along the low level road reached to Avissawella about 5.00. We could see the first rays of the day at Kithulgala

We started journey from Gampaha at 3.30 a. m. Very less traffic on the way and we could reach Riverston at 6.45. We were the first to be there for the day. We left Reversturn around 9.30 am and this is on our way to Pitawala pathana. Manigala behind the scene. This is around 5 Km away from the Hittipola Road. The road was very bad condition and difficult manage with the car. We had to stop the car and walk last 2 km.

On the Friday eve, after office we started our journey from Battaramulla, typically very punctually, 2 hours behind our schedule. We stayed at a private place in Kandy on that night. Next day we wanted to leave Kandy as early as possible and again as usual we were way behind our schedule. After having breakfast from a friend’s place in Rattota, we headed towards Riverston. Our first stop was at the small yet scenic “Bambarakiri Ella” falls. It is just a few hundred meters walk from the main road to the water fall.