Nayabedda Mountain is on our list for a long time as we have seen it on our Wangedigala hike. This mountain is marked in Metric Map as “St. Catherines 2” and the 1 should be St. Catherine’s Seat which is also marked in the Metric Map without the word “Seat”. When I explore this location in Metric map I realized the name given in here and the name we currently use. Actually we are using the estate name for this mountain. But the real name is “St. Catherines 2”.

Haputhale which is situated at attitude of 1431m from sea level surrounded by hills covered by cloud forests and tea plantation. There are number of tourists attractions around Haputhale.

It had been 3 years  since I left Monaragala so I wanted to pay a visit to refresh my memories. On our way we decided to visit an unknown mini Worlds end close to Haputhale.

In childhood I heard that song “Haputal Api Yanawa”. Ever since I want to go to Haputale. I should admit Haputale is very scenic place although people do not visit Haputale as much as some other over rated places. It is a small town with plenty of places to accommodate. You can reach Haputale by bus or train if you use public transport.

Objectives of this trip were to visit at famous view points of Haputhale and Koslanda and camping at Pilkington point of Punagala. I have been at Pilkington point and Millennium point 7 years ago but it was a gloomy day.

The long weekend at the end of July was long awaited as it’s the only long weekend for 2015 until Christmas. We planned a train trip to up-country with cousins, an annual event during August school holidays. However for the 31st the train was fully booked so we had to reserve the train for the 30th – which gave us a bonus day to enjoy the cool climes.

Haputhale is a beautiful city with great attractions like Liption’s seat, Adisham’s Bunglow, Waterfalls and etc. I really enjoyed the cool climate and natural beauties of the city.

So thanks to them all, the fee was paid and the wheelchair was ready to be taken but how we were to take it from Colombo all the way to Kohonawala was the million dollar question. As it was custom built so that it could handle the rugged and uneven terrain of Kohonawala, the wheelchair was, compared to an ordinary one, larger and heavier making it impossible to transport by bus. We didn’t wanna send it by train either in case it got damaged in the process as there were many cables and handles that might not survive a train journey amid many other goods to Badulla. Dismantling it was out of the question as we had no technical knowledge about many screws and bolts attached to it so had to take the full packaged assembled as it was.

Again it was Ana who came to our rescue offering his SUV to take the wheelchair to Kohonawala. So we set the dates for 22-23 Aug but due to the busy schedule NG was unable to join us but Athula and I joined Ana for the Journey. Ana had gone and picked up the wheelchair from the manufacturer at Borella in advance which took the whole back space of the vehicle and we left around 3.00am on 22 August while the rains were hitting us from all around.

I started around 5.30 am on Poya day with my wife and younger son and reached Eheliyagoda and turned left along Dehiowita road and reached Eheliyagoda Rubber estate where you can see Bisodola Ella. Then we came back to A4 and turned left before Kuruvita junction to reach Bopath Ella.