In 2013 for the first time I visited Maduru oya park I was lucky to visit Henannegala cave temple and I was fascinated with its appearance. I wondered if I could climb it but there were few restrictions like the archeology site been a part of the temple and the national park.

රජගල, හෝ රජගලතැන්න/රාස්සගල යනු ඝන වනාන්තරයකින් වැසී ගිය මුහුදු මට්ටමේ සිට අඩි 1038 (316 මීටර) පමණ උස්වූ, ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ නැගෙනහිර පළාතේ පිහිටි එෙෙතිහාසික වශයෙන් ඉතා වැදගත් වූ පෞරාණික නටඹුන් සහිත කඳු වැටියක් වේ. පැරණි නටඹුන් 600කට වඩා වැඩි ප්‍රමාණයක් සහ අක්කර 1080ක් පමණ පුරා විහිදී ගිය මෙම පුරාවිද්‍යා භූමිය අනුරාධපුරය මිහින්තලා පුරාවිද්‍යා භූමියට පමණක් දෙවන වන බැව් පැවසේ.

Nuwaragala and Ethbadda are two rocks situated at Nuwaragala forest reserve. We have camped at Ethbadda and trekked to Nuwaragala in second day. Nuwaragala is considered as the fortress of King Saddathissa.

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