Ethbadda (470m) and Nuwaragala (380m) are giants of Nuwaragala forest reserve. Unfinished castle of King Saddathissa was situated on top of Nuwaragala while his elephant kraal was placed at Ethbadda. This is our camping trip to Ethbadda.

We still in Ampara & we started our 6th day of the tour to Maha Oya side. We took the bus to Maha Oya & from there we took three wheel to visit “Hot Wells in Maha Oya”. Around 9.00 a.m we came to the site.

It was December holidays again we decided to have a family trip and we opted to cover part of the East this time. On a Friday I made some calls to two friends at Ampara and Trinco and got 2 hotels booked. This was intended to be a road trip with time to rest in between.

We started out at 4 AM on day 1 and move towards Ratnapura on Horana Road. On the way we schemed to move towards Ampara and may be towards Trinco later on. We took a quick breakfast from a small wayside shop on the Horana road at about 6. We had passed Maha Saman Devalaya at Ratnapura so many times but never stopped since we always have been running with a another destination in mind. It was 6.45AM when we reached the Ratnapura Maha Saman Devalaya and there was almost no people there.

his is a special report on hot water springs of Sri lanka. This was a very tempting topic which made it so irresistible that I ended up visiting almost all of these remarkable sites in a short period. The hot lakdasun forum post was indeed my greatest guide on this venture. I would be adding few details on some hot water springs I visited during the past few years for the sake of completeness. Here are the documented hot water springs in Sri lanka.

The coming weekend was Vesak holidays and there would be plenty of free food everywhere waiting for me to have a taste. So I decided to hang around Maha oya and experience the village style of celebrating Vesak though my main objective was visiting few archaeology sites. I got together with my batch mate Chanaka and arrived at Maha oya leisurely at around 9am and after having some breakfast we wanted to visit one of the Mega irrigation projects which was underway.

Nuwaragala the fortress on top of a rock in the deep forest of elephant country was once a dream, nevertheless just like many other dreams this one also came true. After getting guidance from Priyanjan who had been there last year, I got together with my friend Dumidu and decided to give it a try. Though it was raining elsewhere and drizzling on and off at Maha oya we went ahead with our plans.

It was a period of mixed weather and I had been away from temples and Archeology sites for a while so decided to have a small tour around Padiyathalawa and Maha oya region on a weekend. Visiting archeology sites and temples is not an easy task since there are many issues lately that cause significant problems and it’s essential to win the trust of the head priests these days otherwise you would be labeled as a “Nidan hora” and be arrested by the 119 squad. Despite all the barriers I decided continue on my quest so on a Saturday I headed towards Padiyathalawa and took a bus towards Wahawa to start things off.

The Distance between Ampara to Mahaoya is 60km. My objective of this journey was to visit at ancient places at A-27 road from Ampara to Mahaoya. Places were; Samanabadda rock cave shelter, Udayagiri ancient temple, Samangala hermitage, Rajagala ruins, Piyangala hermitage, Pulukunawa ruins, Aranthalawa

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 the journey from Maha-oya around 2.30 pm in the evening. This is the best time to start from Maha oya because by 4-5 pm we can reach to Maduru oya reservoir to see the beauty of it with setting sun and to see the wild elephant as well. We took the left turn just before the Maha-oya police station at Maha-oya town. It can be easily identified as Aralaganwila road and the name board is also there for Maha-oya hot water springs.