Among other things, we now have easy links to our brand new facebook page, twitter feed and rss feed. There is also a widget of our videos hosted on youtube. There will also be a contributions coming along with the regular posts. The first “contribution” type post is by Realskullzero, a fellow sinhalaya who snuck off to Nawalapitiya while we weren’t watching.

Images in posts are also larger now, and places and posts are just generally easier to find now. We’ve also put up the Jaffna post, which was a long time coming.

We hope you find the new site useful. We know we’ve been slacking of late. No new posts and not much traveling. Well we plan to change that.

Soon.

Happy exploring!

A week or two ago, we decided we’d sat on our haunches being productive members of society long enough, and asked hiker-extraordinaire Kirigalpoththa if he knew any mountains we could scale.

After deciding on Allagalla, a classical mountain-shaped mound of earth topped by a large pile of rocks, we set off. Alla Galla, literally translates from Sinhalese to “Potato Rock”. On this hike, we discovered many things. Foremost among them that Sri Lanka is truly beautiful, and that Sri Lankans shouldn’t be allowed to name things.

Being Prepared

This particular hike is not too long, and can be easily completed in a day. As such, you’ll only require a bare minimum of supplies. It is always a good idea to carry food for lunch, and always required that each person carries their own bottle of water. Or else you’ll be stuck at the top of the mountain being pelted by rays of sunshine thick enough to walk on. Yes, like the song; except you’ll be deliriously dehydrated, not happy. Other than that, footwear with a good grip, raincoat, light change of clothes, snacks and good cargo pants is more or less all you need.

Getting There

The trail is fairly easy to get to. Your first waypoint is the Ihala Kotte railway station, which is about three stations after the Rambukkana station. It is not a major stop, so make sure you don’t get on an express train. Any slow train that plies the track heading uphill towards Kandy/Badulla will go past this area.

We decided to take the last train out on a Sunday, which was at 11pm from Fort. Its last stop is Rambukkana, so we got off at there at about 1am and decided to spend the night there. After going through the usual ritual of deciding on a place to sleep, then walking all over the place for an hour looking for other places to sleep, we went back to the original place. To sleep.

The original place, in this case, was the train we arrived on, which was stopped overnight in Rambukkana. The doors were open and the lights were on. Thanking the gods of wasted energy we settled in to try and get some sleep on the commuter-train type seats.

There was a train that left Rambukkana at 5am which would take us to Ihala Kotte. We took it.

When you get to Ihala Kotte, look to the left of the railway tracks. Then move your gaze upwards. That is what you are going to climb. It might look terribly daunting because it is a steep face of rock, nothing less, nothing more. Thats why you have to go around it.

Get off the train and head toward Kandy along the tracks for a few meters and you should come across a path heading upwards through the trees to your left (waypoint 2). Head into it.

The Trail

This is the start of the walk to the top. This footpath will lead to Poththepitiya (waypoint 3), a small town on the other side of the mountain. Once you reach it, ask around on how to reach the top. There are a few paths that branch off, and you sometimes have to head down less obvious paths. But you can be assured of there being people in this area, who will usually be plenty helpful with directions.

After getting past the village, you will find yourself heading through some tea plantations (waypoint 4). The road will soon be winding around the mountain. There will be many great views.

Once you get past the tea plantation, you’ll head into thick jungle (waypoint 5). This is the last place you’ll see signs of human residence. Note that this is also the last place you’re likely to find water, so fill up. If you have the luxury of purification tablets, use them. But the water from many springs at this point is drinkable.

Head up the trail and depending on the weather, you might go through a stretch full of leeches. Whether or not these leeches will get to you is directly tied to your hardcoreness-quotient, we’ve found.

As you head higher, the trail will become steeper. And also harder to get through, thanks to it being slowly taken over by thorny bushes on both sides. After about an hour of pushing through all this, you end up near the top. You can see the top, and all that surrounds you is savannah-like grass. Except of course, that is not really the top.

The Top

Allagalla is a peculiar thing. Once you get to the “top” of the hill, there is yet another rock to climb. There is a massive pile of boulders that just sits there and mocks you till you claw your way up the thing.

Thankfully the rock was nice, dry, and conducive to a good grip, and didn’t give us too much trouble climbing. The view from the top is, in one word: spectacularly amazingly awesomeness condensed into a single view from the top of a big rock.

It was that good.

Getting Back

Getting back down should take significantly less time than the climb up. A storm was beginning to brew while we were on the rock and we decided to hightail it down before we were forced to take a ride down the big mudslide the trail was likely to become if it rained. We did get a nice bath on the way down through the tea plantation though.

In total, it took us about five hours to climb, and around three to get all the way down. The elevation at the base is about 380m, and the mountaintop is a good 700-800m up from there. After a quick change of clothes we caught the 4:45 train passing through Ihala Kotte back to Colombo. The train, unfortunately, was packed and we had to stand through most of it.

Note: The last train from Ihala Kotte leaves the station at around 6.30.

This is possibly the best experience we’ve managed to have in a one day trip, and is highly recommended. It’s mad fun.

On the last day of our backpacking venture, after lounging about in Polonnaruwa, we decided to leg it to Badulla to get a desire for some hills and mountains out of our system.

Now Badulla aint no short distance from Polonnaruwa and we found ourselves on the road for a good 5 to 6 hours or so bussing it to Mahiyanganaya and then Badulla. Direct buses from Polonnaruwa to Badulla are less common but Polonnaruwa has a steady stream of buses leaving for Mahiyanganaya from mid-morning to mid-afternoon. But do mind, the last bus to Badulla leaves Mahiyanganaya at about 6 pm.

Badulla Town

Is a pretty modern city. Resthouses are affordable and are easily found after some quick consultation with a friendly tuk tuk driver. We got a comfortable two-bed room for Rs 1000 or so. Food is not included of course but delicious kottu can be had from townside shops.

The weather can get chilly, and a persistent drizzle is common during many months. A raincoat/ umbrella would be handy to have around.

Not Ella

Our original intention was to head over to Ella, a place famous for its natural beauty intertwined with a deep history of lore and er, other such dreamy stuff, but a last minute logistical difficulties forced us to reconsider.

Also, after a week of tiring but happy travel, our city slicker butts were calling out for creature comforts; deeply embarrassing our ‘hardcore’ outer veneers. So when the station master at Badulla railway station said that observation class tickets were only available for Saturday and not Sunday, we seized on the opportunity to leave that very day, convincing ourselves that the famed train ride from Badulla to Colombo in Observation class was worth sacrificing Ella.

It wasn’t of course, nothing short of a life threatening situation is really worth sacrificing Ella for. A day in Ella followed by the train ride we will detail out below would of course have the makings of a perfect trip. But 50% is way better than nothing at all, Confucious say.

The Train

Observation class is the rear end of the train. This end of the carriage is one big glass window affording splendid views of the surrounding countryside. The seats are laid back and comfortable and also feature wider and more tourist friendly windows.

You must ensure to book in advance to be sure of getting one of these coveted seats, especially on weekends. If you are lucky, like we were, you’d be able to snap up a few unbooked seats that sometimes are available. Tickets cost Rs. 750.

The Ride

At first, you may think it romantic to travel in 3rd class seats with first class tickets and you’d be right. Mingling with the people and enjoying the atmosphere of hill country trains can be one of those cliched simple pleasures in life that guide books always talk about. But after a while, 3rd class gets crowded. And you may consider returning to your comfortable first class seats after a while when that old man you are squashed next to starts a coughing fit and that runny nosed little kid wedges himself between you and the window.

The scenery of course, is breathtaking. The railway lines were installed by the Brits roughly two centuries ago to transport tea and coffee crops from the hill country. The train meanders through plantations, tunnels and along ridges that afford sprawling views of waterways and distant hills.

Sit back, relax and enjoy. Take your laptop and 3G dongle if you like. Grab some drinks and food and chill out in observation. The ride takes roughly 10-12 hours and you will soon be overcome with a happy doze as the gentle mountain air caressingly buffets your face.

Now I’m sure that fort over there is plenty for anybody to look at and all, but what can you really do in Galle? We spent two days there and discovered a few nooks and crannies. Granted most of these nooks were in the Galle Literary Festival, which none of us really took much notice of. As such, the next post is probably going to be a contribution by someone who did take part in a few of the events at the famed GLF. Don’t worry, we haven’t gone soft; this post is about “Jungle Beach”. The name itself screams adventure does it not?

Jungle Beach

So after we rode around the fort for a while and soaked up all the magnificent architecture we could without feeling like constructing the Parthenon with our tent at night, we decided to venture out of the protective walls of the great fort and actually do something. We had heard of a place called Jungle Beach, supposedly an amazing spot to take a dip and just a few minutes out of Galle.

Getting There

Head towards Matara from Galle for a few kilometers(sadly we could not find out the exact number) and you will reach the Ruhunu Cement Factory, technically in Unawatuna. A few meters past this, you will see a road to the right, ask the locals and they will direct you to this turnoff. Everyone in the area seems to recognize the name “Jungle Beach”. Head straight along this road. About a hundred meters in you will face a steep climb going on for a few hundred meters. Dragging bicycles up this makes it feel like a few kilometers. A brave few might try to ride up this steep gradient on a low gear but will give up approximately sixty seconds into this excruciatingly difficult exercise.

This hill turned out to be none other than the Rumassala mountain, supposedly dropped from the grocery bag by Hanuman on his way to a great big continental kitchen.

After a while, the climb becomes less steep and you come to a point on the road where you get a spectacular view overlooking the two stretches of beach that make up Jungle Beach. This is the point where you realize that when they say Jungle, they mean jungle. Not just any jungle either. This is thick jungle on the side of a mountain which requires a man-made path to make headway in. The entire thing is covered in thick greenery like a green afro.

You will end up at a Buddhist temple built with Japanese aid. From here, there will be a little path into the jungle on the right side of the road directly in front of the temple. Head into this path. It is rocky and slippery and in some places overgrown with bushes. You won’t come across snakes or leopards but you will occasionally come across a couple or two making their way on to a lonely rock overseeing the ocean for some “quality time”.

Keep on this path, and you will finally arrive at Jungle Beach. After you confirm that it was indeed worth the trek down the scratchy path, you may take a dip in the cool blue waters. Be warned though, it is only shallow for a distance of about twenty meters out to sea. After that it gets quite deep and choppy. When we got there a German expat who owned a local guest house and was taking a dip in the sea himself gave us some information on the place. Apart from a Navy boat hanging about a hundred meters out, there was nobody else there.

In and Around the Fort

The Galle fort is a fascinating place. It is a functioning part of the Galle city enclosed within the great walls of an old Dutch fort. It is littered with remnants of that era such as the crumbling ramparts themselves and various other buildings dotting the place. Nearly all the buildings in the fort look like they were built by people wearing wooden clogs, but most are relatively new and just made to look like that.

Camping in the Fort

We asked around for places to camp in the fort and were mostly met with blank looks. Most people just didn’t know if it was okay to camp out there. Since we weren’t told not to do it either, we decided to see what happens and just set up the tent on the eastern ramparts. Now that’s one morning view you won’t soon forget. There doesn’t seem to be any opposition to camping around the fort as we did so on two consecutive nights and nobody said anything.

Transport to Galle

If you want to cycle around Galle but are not too fond of sunburn from cycling a hundred odd kilometers from Colombo, you can get the bikes sent via train for a fee of around Rs. 300. Just go to the Colombo Fort railway station’s parcel building(The one towards Pettah, behind the Manning Market) and hand it in. Make sure you have a license for it though, as they are required and quite easy to get at your local Grama Niladhari’s office. They cost a pittance.

The same can be done for bikes being sent from Galle to Colombo. Just try your best to get a license for your bike.

There’s probably more to Galle than Jungle Beach, but we are yet to discover it. Maybe a later trip. For now, have fun at Jungle Beach.