We have planned a journey for covering 5 main giants in Nuwaraeliya in 3 days. And we were able to conquer Mahakudugala (2101m), Single Tree (2105m) and Kikiliyamana (2242) on the first day and we spend the night near the entrance of Uda Radella farm and on the second day, we conquer Uda Radella (2143m) and Great Western (2215m) successfully.

Since Madusanka lives in Nuwaraeliya, he was able to take the oral permission to enter the Uda Radella farm and we found a kind person who works there and he told us some details about this forest and the leopards. And he switched off the electric fence and we crossed it and headed to Great Western through a giant forest. We had a GPS route and we followed it always and able to reach the Great Western viewpoint without any difficulty.

Great Western Mountain (2212m) is the 7th highest mountain in Sri Lanka situated closer to Great Western estate and station. I have been there 9years ago and now the hike is not a difficult task with well paved pathways. We have added task to get down to Pundalu Oya side to explore hidden waterfalls.

I have always felt very sentimental about Great Western coz it was the turning point in my hiking life. When I went to GW last time, I told Morgan that we must camp on the summit one day and get the ultimate feeling of this beautiful lady. Oh, please check out the note I’ve put in the box at the top regarding GW coming down the list of Highest Mountains of Sri Lanka to the 7th place. It’s a mystery what this Kudahagala is and the Wikipedia gives no information as to its location, even the district. I wonder if this is the Agra-Bopath at HP coz there’s another mountain further down the list named Mahakudahagala at the 11th place with a height of 2096m. Casual search on Google didn’t yield anything fruitful either. Hopefully, one of you might be able to shed some light into this subject.

Let’s move on and start our journey, shall we? Anyway, she coming down the list was not a very happy thought for me. I wanted to take my hiking partner in the first journey, Hari with me but he wasn’t that sentimental about GW like me and decided to focus on something he’s not done before as the list of our to-do-things keep growing longer every passing day. So I was down to Uncle Tony, Atha and Prasa. Unfortunately, Tony had to pull out at the last minute leaving the three of us and we were in no mood to back off. Oh Atha too bought a tent with me so we wanted to try our tents at 2000+m.