Hmmm! Thought of doing a report after a while and this is one report I couldn’t finish off last year! Im really happy my second home is not in an urbanized area like Colombo and there are plenty of places to hang around whenever I visit there. Chilaw area (Pitigal korale) is known to have 999 lakes which belong to god “Thaniwelle” and few of them are known for their bird life. I will be posting few snaps taken at those locations and if I haven’t mention the name of any bird that’s because I don’t know it or can’t recall the name.

After a tiring day, the water felt great on our body but Wumi kept sniffing it feeling a bit doubtful. We stayed in about an hour and the sun was ready to go down. Shantha treated us with a cup of ripe Maa Dan (berries) and they were delicious. Having changed into some comfy shorts, we decided to take a short walk into the jungle and Sunimal advised not to venture deep into the jungle as elephants are very common there.

Wilpattu has always been on our wish list, more so after reading Nihal de Silva’s The Road to Elephant Pass. Even though the park was reopened in 2009, we were not able to go that way due to many constraints. The wish finally became a reality only in December 2012.

A week end trip to Kalpitiya was planned as a family vacation. The main attraction was the dolphins but some detours to see interesting sites on the way were also in the itinerary.
We started around 4.00 am on a Saturday – just 3 of us in our car. En route to Palavi along A3, we visited the Munnewaram Kovil in Chilaw. The Munnewaram Hindu Kovil has many little shrines within the main complex; dedicated to various Hindu deities. Photography is not allowed inside the kovil.

The event was organized as the 6th event of Adventure Sri Lanka flickr travel and photography group. As planed we left Colombo around 2 in the morning after going through few unexpected things on transport (Unfortunately it continued). We were travelling in three vans with 21 members of Adventure Sri Lanka group soon joined by three other members by a car at Seeduwa around three in the morning. We all started going towards Kalpitiya. On the way we looked for a place to get a short breakfast and tea.

This event was organized by Adventure Sri Lanka (flickr) group as its 4th consecutive event on this year. Anawilundawa is a bird sanctuary located aproximately 10Km away from Chilaw on Colombo Puttalam road (120Km from Colombo) and Nawadankulama is a lake complex about 10-15Kms away from turn to Anawilundawa. Anawilundawa is a ramsa wetland where there are many migrant birds in the migration season.