Arugam Bay | Wayfarer's notes

Crew : 11

Transportation : Public Bus and a hired Van

Duration : Two Days

After a long time we have planned to go on a trip to Arugam Bay. Me and three other friends rushed to the Colombo – Panama CTB Bus, which leaves colombo fort bus stand at 7 pm while other seven friends started their journey around 4 pm from Kandy by the hired Van. The bus was too crowded but fortunately we have reserved our seats in the morning of the same day so we had seats though we arrived to the bus stand in the last minute. Most of the people were to Rathnapra and Awissawella and almost only the people who were seated were left after passing Rathnapura.

The bus took nearly 8 hours to reach Pottuvil Town after stopping at two places to eat, rest and refresh. Our friends who came by the van were arrived two hours earlier even after stopping at one friends’ house for dinner in Monaragala. We just went to sleep after having a bath though we slept almost all the way down to Pottuvil. It was around 8 am when we all got up and prepared to explore the east cost. Before starting our journey, we had parata for breakfast in a small cafe in Pottuvil town and then went straight to Kudumbigala Aranya. Kudumbigala aranya is a place where Buddhist monks use to Meditate and stay apart from the disturbances of the secular world. The route to Kudumbigala is through the Kumana National Park, which has the highest Bird density among all the National parks in Sri Lanka. We were fortunate to see a Fox, Crocodile, Monkeys, Sri Lankan Junglefowl (Gallus lafayetii), Peacocks (Peafowl) and many other birds that i haven’t seen earlier. The Friends came by the van have seen couple of elephants in the previous day evening.

Kudumbigala aranya is surrounded by a heavy grown forest and there is a pathway to the top of the small hill, which a vehicle cannot access. The path was looked that it is being swept daily. The surrounding is calm and it was surprisingly cool environment.
On the top of the hill there are ruins of a pagoda, and a newly built statue of Lord Buddha. There weren’t many people in Kudumbigala at the time we visited. The monks were at the “Daana shalawa” (a place which has built to serve food to the monks) when we go there.

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Then we went to “Balum Gala” which is near the Kudumbigala. It is said that this place has been used to communicate with distant places by smoke or voice signals since a vast area is visible to that place. After a long photo shoot we came back to Pottuvil town to have the lunch. We went to a place called Village Hut, where accommodation is provided in small tree houses. Since it was almost the evening we had to wait for some time until they prepare our lunch. So we thought of playing beach rugby. After some time we went back there. The food seemed tastier as we were starving. After the lunch, we went to Arugam Bay by our van and played until we were dead tired. Since it was the off season there weren’t much surfers. We had the chance to pull few fishing boats to the sea shore. Then we came back to our lodge to have a wash and refresh before going to have the dinner. We found a decent place called Bay Vista to buy the dinner (But the food was a bit over priced). People there were good and friendly. We came back to the lodge at around 11 pm and all went to sleep straight away.

After having a good nap we woke up a little bit earlier than the previous day and left pottuvil early in the morning even without having the breakfast. One of our friends live in Monaragala and he invited us to have brunch there. The food which was made by my friend’s Mom was tasty and all ate more than they could. 🙂 He gave us steamed corn to eat on the way. We arrived Kandy around 4 pm even after stopping at another friend’s house in theldeniya for tea.

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