Hike to Handun Ella

Ranga was telling me about this place at Kithulgala where they have some estate type of property, in his blog he has posted many pictures of eye-catching waterfalls and stuff. We were planning on this trip to Kithulgala for quite some time; finally we made a decision to go there on 29th November, but I was planning to attend TNL OnStage finals on that evening, so we planned the trip to be back in Colombo by 7pm.

We started the trip early as 6.30am, I picked up Lahiru, Dilina and Dharshana on the way to Ranga’s place. Parked the car at his place and all of us got into his van and we were on our way to Kithulgala. About one hour later we stopped at this hotel called ‘Weerasiri’ at Puwakpitiya for breakfast and there was this buffet for only 120 bucks. Now folks, that’s a quite decent place to have the breakfast for a good price. Without wasting much time there we continued our journey again. By the time we arrived at Kithulgala it was almost 10am. Got down from the van and the guys were ready to roll :). Ranga told us there is a footpath through the jungle which leads to this waterfall, since it was raining time-to-time, there would be loads of leeches on that route, to avoid all that trouble we decided to go with the water stream which leads to up to the waterfall. The route was very long but it was just AMAZING.

(Going through the water stream)

After about one hour we were near one of the small type of waterfall, as we couldn’t continue going though the water stream anymore we stopped there for a while and had some snacks.

(Having a snack and finally reaching the 'Handun Ella' waterfall)

Then the bad part; we had to take the jungle route to go to the waterfall from that point :( and yes there were dozens of leeches waiting for us on the way. Quickly all of us went through the jungle footpath and we were at the waterfall removing all the blood suckers from our bodies. After that we jumped in to the water and it was good fun. The waterfall was amazing and there was a little cave kinda place which we could swim and go. The whole thing was superb and the reason why it’s still not polluted is; there is no easy way to reach the place.

After spending some time in the water we were hungry and came back for lunch. This time we had to take the jungle route :( yup it’s the leeches and it was raining too :( Just after having lunch we were on our way back to Colombo. Everything except the rain and leeches was great.