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

We organized this hike as a university tradition. There were seven secret members for organizing the hike. We started the hike at about 9 in the morning from the Faculty canteen with a guide dog “White Fang” . Then we entered into Hanthana forest reserve with sudden a rain fall. We had to face a terrible leech attack at the start. We came to a huge area with pine trees. Then we climbed through the tea estates to a plain area of the mountain range. We had our lunch there.

I was away from Sinharaja for too long……. It had been more than a year since the previous visit. Its a place which you can’t stay away from for long so I had to some how squeeze a two day trip in July. It was going to be Thihela’s first visit to Sinharaja as well. We left Moratuwa around 8.00 in the morning. With no stops, we straigt away drove to the Blue magpie lodge. We reached there just passed noon.

Originally we planned this trip to visit the waterfalls in Ginigathhena and Hatton area, but since we were able to reach Ginigathhene before 7, made a sudden change of plans and decided to hike the Thotupola kanda. As I mentioned earlier the climate was really cool and the roads were all covered in mist.

Wawetenna an off the beaten travel location has been hidden from popular travel forums for years. Times to time many inquiries have been made by travelers on this marvelous travel location, but none has received answers satisfactory. As per the 1:50,000 map of Kandy, there were two locations with the same name. Finally having analyzing limited data available, a place closed to Madamahanuwara was identified as the real Wawethenna where a panoramic view point was existed. This travelogue is dedicated to all who interested on re-discovering of this hidden travel location.

We started our journey from Kahawa at about 6.00am. Normally if we need to go to Ratnapura we used to go to Panadura and head to Ratnapura. But we thought to go our journey through the country then I found the way using the road map published by the dept. of survey. We turn from Kahawa junction and refueled our bike at Meetiyagoda. Then we reached to Elpitiya and about 7.15am were able to reach Pelawatta. There is a road from Pelawatta to Baduraliya.

There was a hike to the Kahathaaththa Hela rock at Nilgala. During the time of King Dutugemunu, there had been a monastery on this rock. The ruins were to be seen. We also, saw the Nilgala aniket where the waters of Galoya gets transferred to help paddy cultivation. A few members in the group went bird watching from Kossapola Campsite one morning.

We took Galle road and we depart from home early morning 5.30 AM since we are planning to visit Weherahena and Wawrukannala temples in Matara as part of this trip. Took our breakfast at Koggala beach and drive towards Matara and arrived at weherahena around 9 AM. Since this is a week day (Monday) there were only few visitors to the temple and we had good chance to observe the Lord Buddha statue (It says tallest statue in Sri Lanka but not sure since Kandewihara Lord Buddha statue might be taller than that) and also Umang wihara (tunnel) art works as well.

We started at Peradeniya at 5.00 am and reached the trail head, which was about 9 km from the Visitor Centre at Horton Plains towards Ohiya, at 11.00 am. I know six hours to do a distance that was just a little over 100 km was totally unacceptable considering the facts our hired van was so… good, the driver was so… cool, road was so… private, and what was more, we all wanted to get to the trail head as early as possible.

I left Colombo and reached a small town just before Mawanella called Utuwankanda where you can find the road which leads you to Saradiels rock (Utuwan mawatha). After walking about 1Km I came across a small road branching off towards the Saradiels rock towards the left. I travelled uphill until I met some locals where I asked for directions, they said take the path which goes uphill so at one point I entered another path which branched out to the left trough a small rubber estate. The path was there until the last bit, it was a steep climb on the slippery muddy track.

We started our trip from Colombo at 4.30 am and we came puttulum at about 7 am and we visited wind mill developing site at Puttulum lagoon. After that we started our journey again through Auradapura and we had our breakfast at beautiful place. We stay at Nuwarawewa rest house. It is reasonable and good accommodation option at Anuradapura. Second day we went to Polonnaruwa through habarana.We stay at Girithale Hotel It is little bit Expensive but you couldn’t get that nature experience any were.

The by-road started from the junction at Lunugala Police station, turned in to a hilly & narrow one within the first kilometer in distance. Condition of the road was acceptable because it had been repaired recently. Having climbing the hill, we came to a place known as Janathapura, a small village on a gap of two ranges of mountains. Janathapura was a three way junction. There were two roads at the western face of the range. (We came from the Eastern face).