Before 6.00 am we left Gampaha. Hemantha, coming from Ehetuwewa, a small town at the northern boundary of the Kurunegala Distict, had asked to join with us at Ibbagamuwa junction. However we had to wait more than 1 hour for Hemantha. So we had time enough to have a visit & rest at the famous Bathalegoda tank. On our way we met the young wild elephant who used to rob foods form vehicles passing through, at the Habarana jungle.

At around 7.30 – 8.00 am we stopped at a small roadside hut at “Ranna” for breakfast. (We had newly made hoppers & bananas, pancake and poll-roti and plain tea) Then we proceed to Tissa market to purchase the vegetables as all other provisions were purchased from Colombo. (We got fresh village vegetables from tissa) At around 11.00 am we came to Palatupana Office (Yala Entrance) and took about 30mts to get our permit confirmed and they provide us with a Tracker (Dimuthu)

We were due to travel on the Kurunagala – Puttlam road with some time to spare. So I looked up a couple of books for some diversions and came up with two interesting sounding places – Tonigala Inscription and Paramakanda Viharaya – in සිරි ලක අැසු දුටු තැන්. We never made it to Tonigala (one of the largest inscriptions in SL) as we were so taken up with what we found in Paramakanda. Turn off a few km past Anamaduwa by the sign board for Paramakanda Purana Viharaya. Driving through very flat land you suddenly see this huge rock outcrop ahead.

Few of my friends decided to go on a trip to Badulla by train, in December 2008. We had to travel by the night mail train because we were not enough lucky to reserve tickets for an early one. We got into the train at Veyangoda station at about 9.15 pm on 19/12/2008.
It was 6.00 am the following day when we reached Pattipola which was the most elevated railway station from the sea level, in Sri Lanka.

We started our journey from Katubedda at about 11.30 in the night. The crew was six. We came Colombo fort at 12.30 am from bus. Because of four day vacation there were huge crowd in the Kandy busses. We found group of boys and girls who go Knuckles range also. We set with them and hired a van to go Matale. At 3.30 am we came from Colombo. At 7.30 am we arrived to Matale. We got the Matale -> Riverston -> Illukkmbura -> Pallegama -> Narangamuwa CTB bus and came to Rathninda.(If u want Matale CTB depot no: 0662222281)

It was around 6AM when we left Colombo with UdaWalawe national park being our destination. The crew consisted of me and my wife, along with three other close friends from our uni days. We loaded up the camping gear and other paraphernalia to the back of the pick up and I took the wheels for the first part of the journey.
The drive upto Pambahinna was rather uneventful with three stops for breakfast at Awissawella, fuel at Rathnapura and change of the spare tyre at Pelmadulla.

I and three of my friends decided to attend the Somawathi religious function on 8th May. Along with that we decided to go to Aukana and the ancient city of Polonnaruwa. So we took off at 2.00 a.m. on 7th May from Kiribathgoda. We used a Maruti 800 as our transportation medium because of its fuel economy.

Around 5.00 a.m. we took a left turn from Mirisgoni Oya junction and headed to our first place of interest.

Last day of our trip we planned to visit Kalpitiya and Bathlangunduwa. We were so tired and got up late and started the journey around 8.30AM. It took lot of time as the Puttalam – Anuradhapura (A12) is under construction. On Our Way to Puttalam we stopped at “Thabbowa Wewa” and relaxed a bit. It is near karuwalagaswewa and it was a nice location to have breakfast.

Next Day was a big day for us as any of us haven’t been to Wilpattu National Park. Early morning we got up and headed to the park. Mr Chaminda Dissanayake, the owner of Kahala Jeep Safari gave us a great help arranging the best guides and the safari.

We started our journey around 12.30 AM and continuously drove up to Puttalam it was 2.45AM when we arrived Puttalam. From Puttalam there were 2 roads to go to Talei Mannar. Short one goes through Willpattu but it need a 4×4 vehicle and the other one through Madawachiya and joins A14 road. We chose the long drive as the Road through Willpattu opens at 4.30AM and it is a Hazardous journey. We came to know later when we arrived at Mannar the road through Willpattu was flooded.

I was bit worried because I couldn’t do a trip to knuckles but luck was on my side our guys decided to go on a trip & asked me a place to go  ! After doing the reservations from Baththaramulla we left on an early morning from Colombo to reach Mathale at around 10a.m where we bought all the stuff we needed & lunch packets. We then continued our journey towards Rattota in search of Bambarakiri Falls (fed by water streams of knuckles mountain range).

We left Colombo at around 4 pm on Friday, planning to stay overnight at the Wildlife Trust TREE centre at Randenigala. We left Kandy at around 7.30 pm after picking up a member of our group. It was a wet night and visibility was poor – interestingly the route tracked on my GPS (which has preloaded 1” topo maps of Sri Lanka) varied quite significantly from the roads marked on the map. We reached the barrier at the reservoir shortly before 10 pm – the road is closed to traffic at 10 pm, and reopened at 6 am, and reached the TREE centre soon afterwards.