hike.with.naddy: Journey to Thotupola and Kirigalpoththa (One Day)

Date : 2019-04.20

Reaching to the Place

Me and My hiking partner (Tharushan Rathnaweera) took the night mail on the day before and hike was planned to be completed within one day. we took the night mail the day before and left Colombo at 08.00pm.

We were very unlucky to find a place to sit in the train because we couldn't book train tickets as we planned this journey in sudden. Therefore we had to stay awake the whole night. But we were very excited from the fact that we are gonna do two hikes within one day and we decided to make most out of the train journey. We sat on the foot-board and we started enjoying the cold breeze at night. As people from Colombo, cold breeze was always something that amused us. but it was not for a long time. As a person who cannot withstand cold since I am a kid, i began to shiver. It was super crowded in the train and moving here and there was bit a hassle. I was worried that j might not be able to return to this spot i cherished few mins back. I tried my best to keep up with that but when i couldn't do it anymore i decided to move out. Then time to time I was able to come back to my spot to enjoy the cold breeze. It was not a comfy journey at all. At a point I was bit mad about Tharushan as he was the one who took care of transportation. But this was a good lesson for us when it comes to future Journeys. We reached Pattipola around 4.30 am in the morning and it was shivering cold.

Getting breakfast

It was not a good time to find a spot to eat at that time. But we were tired and fed up with the 06 hour train journey and we wanted to eat something and refresh up a little bit. My partner remembered about a place not far from the station and we walked there to check out. It was bad luck! place was closed and we were lost in the cold outside. It was clear that there were no other place to eat anything out here. Before giving up, I decide to go and check if there's anyone in the shop. We could see a light there and we decided to knock. It took sometime to get their attention but we managed to do it somehow. They were really nice people and invited us inside and offered us hot water. Then we bought some food from there and used their washroom to freshen up. And we were ready to hike.

Pre-Jouney before hiking Thotupola Mountain and Kirigalpoththa Mountain

Before starting the real hike we had to go a long way to the mountains. But the distance to Thotupola Mountain was around 5 km and we decided to take a tuk in order to get there since were on a strict schedule and we had to cover two hikes. We left around 6 from the food place and it took sometime to reach the Thotupola Hiking Trail starting point.

Thotupola Mountain Hiking Trail

This was a clear trail and only takes around maximum of 45 mins to hike. Depending on your stamina and strength this can be either longer or shorter. But Thotupola Mountain is one of the best scenic hikes I've been to.