Braving the heights at Bible Rock

Team of 3

1 Day in May 2013

Public Transport

Since of late, Bible Rock has become a bit of a tourist destination. Whenever I surf through the joyous World Wide Web, among the Syrian uprising, UEFA league updates and endless and pointless celebrity news, I often stumble upon a tour group that advertises treks/hikes to Bible Rock.

My travel buddy Prishan and I had been curious for some time to see what the fuss was all about. So we made Bible rock a part of a one day tour itinerary that covered Uthuwankanda as well (Refer previous post)

We first completed the Uthuwankanda hike and then moved onto Bible Rock (aka Bathalegala). So what we did was we came back to the Uthuwankanda junction and took the bus to Mawanella and from there took the bus to Debathgama. Ask the bus conductor to drop you off at Hathapalagama. This is the road that leads to Bible Rock. If you’re travelling from Colombo of course you need to take the bus to Mawanella from Pettah itself. (Or any bus that goes through Mawanella for that matter).

The bus passes through rural upcountry Sri Lanka and comes to Hathpalagama – which is kind of a really small city with a couple of boutiques strewn across. The road to the top of Bible Rock is pretty easy to find. If you can’t find it just ask the local and they’ll probably give you a bemused look and point to the road. It’s that easy to find.

The road winds through the better part of the village. It’s by no means a city. Scarcely populated but livelihoods thrive in small patches along the uphill climb. The road winds through some terrain that’s so high you sometimes tend to wonder how people living on such high terrain manage to get basic supplies. But they do. And needless to say, a fifty year old living on these hills will probably beat the crap out of Colombo fellows like me in a hundred yard dash. Mind you, this is a concrete road – at least on most parts. Tuk Tuks are frequent and we saw the occasional Honda Civic parked on flatter garden patches along the way. So if you have a 4WD unlike us, this is pretty easy going.

But even 4WDs can impress the locals so much. As the climb goes higher and higher, the habitation disappears along with what remained of the concrete road. This first stretch of the climb ends in an open area where presumably you have to leave your beautiful 4WDs at the mercy of the elements and continue the ascent the good old fashioned way – by foot. At this point, the trail begins with a marked sign which leads you to a sharp right. And then the real test of fitness begins.

As is the case with any upcountry hike, it is advisable to avoid the rainy season. We learnt this the hard way on our hike to Knuckles. We were lucky this time and there was only a slight splatter of raindrops which lasted for 10 minutes at most. The first part of this trail goes through a forest with massive trees which shield you from the sun and the rain. But the best part about this is that you can actually feel the power of the elements around you. The trees are massive and the canopy formation of leaves and branches allow only shards of sunlight in through the little openings. It’s an experience that you need to experience. This blog cannot pay justice to it. Okay! Moving on...

‘Mana’ is a staple form of vegetation on Sri Lankan higher grounds and Bible Rock as no exception. You will pass through a couple of waist to shoulder high Mana growth on your way to the summit. My friend Prishan did a waypoint documentation using his brand new navigator and I’ve attached the link to the KMZ file at the bottom of this post. But once on the trail you will realize that you don’t really need a waypoint navigator because the trail is pretty clear. It’s not Galle Road clear but as far as hiking trails and common sense goes, you can’t go wrong.

After a strenuous hike which lasted just over 2 hours, we reached the final phase of our climb to the top. And the stories were true. This is indeed the hard part of the climb. Personally I don’t see how some of these tour companies take little kids to Bible Rock, because the last part of this hike is quite tricky and dangerous (Maybe they stop at a certain point. I don’t really know). The climb steepens to almost a 45 degree angle after a certain point and if you look underfoot you will see that you are actually on pure solid rock. Some good folk who had foreseen the plight of hikers such as us had made some crude concrete steps on the tough to scale rock incline. There is also a steel wire lying on the rock which the hiker can use to hold on to and pull himself through a point just before the concrete steps point. But be careful. There is a steel wire lying on one part of the path with no visible concrete steps. DO NOT try to be a hero and walk on the rock using this wire as a holding rope – simply because on the side of the rock are nature/man-made rock steps which can serve the purpose safely. However all this concrete steps / wires business lasts for like 20 meters. After that it’s back to ‘balls to the wall’ balancing.

Whenever you can, leave your pride on the ground and walk on all fours. The winds at this height are amazingly strong and you are fully exposed in a 270 degree angle. The closer you are to the floor, the better chance you will have of reaching the summit before ending up in Mawanella. Do not forget to turn around and look back at this point. Especially this point. What you see will make you wonder what the hell you’re doing in the concrete jungle back in Colombo.

Finally, the mini terrors ended and before we knew it, we are at the summit! The first thing you’ll notice is this one single tree smack in the middle of your path when at the plateau. Yes, it was just as we pictured. The summit is not a massive cone. It was a plateau. Like a massive cricket ground with an extra extra long ‘Long On’ and ‘Fine Leg’ and a really really short ‘Mid Wicket’ and ‘Deep Extra Cover’. We explored the
plateau from one corner to the other. If you intend on camping, it’s perfectly possible. There is an abandoned mini temple with a Bell Tower and a Bo Tree on the right edge of the plateau and a rundown little room/building on the way to it. Basically, lots of safe places to camp overnight. However, you will need to have some water with you since there aren’t a lot of water sources on the way. There was a after you pass the civilization there was a very very tiny waterfall further away from the track. This was the only water source we came across and we cannot guarantee its purity either. And this too was at the very beginning of the trail.

My friends use the ‘Check In’ option on Facebook to check into restaurants, airports, movie theatres etc. Prishan and I use it to check in at mountain tops J However; we had a hard time keeping a 3G signal going. But our determination proved successful and after checking in at ‘Bible Rock Summit’, we went to the left corner of the plateau, found a flat open rock, took our shoes and socks off and chilled at 819 meters above sea level. Bliss!

Hope this post was informative enough. Should you wish to know more please email me on ceylontripper@gmail.com or use the popular method nowadays - Facebook. That should work too.

The link to the waypoint map is available on my dropbox folder right here.

More pictures of the hike can be found on my Flickr profile or on Prishan's Flickr profile.

Until next time then,

Buh-bye!

Miranga

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Saradiyel – One crazy mofo!

After the lapse of a couple of months, my hiking buddy Prishan and another colleague by the name of Indika had the bright idea to do a hike without a lot of planning time. The target was to surmount Uthuwankanda and Bible Rock in one day and then come back to Colombo. We read a couple of blog posts from previous hikers and found out that this was indeed possible. If i remember correctly we had only about a week between the ‘bright idea’ day and the day of the hike.

One thing we learnt from our previous hike was to be true to the age old motto of hikers – ‘travel light!’. So without any compromise, we decided to drop as much as we could from our backpacks and carry only the bare essentials. Mine included a change of clothes, One litre of water, some tools and of course, a camera J.

We started our journey at about 3.30 am from Colombo. We reached Pettah by way of a cab and took the bus to kandy. You can take any bus that goes on the Colombo – Kandy route as long as it goes through Mawanella. I was asleep through most of this journey. But it was obvious to me that the driver was a pilot school dropout since we were in Kegalle the moment i woke up from my very short slumber.

We got off at the Uthuwankanda junction at about 6 am and had a light breakfast which we purchased at the Pettah Bus Stand. A local nearby told us that we needed to take Uthuwam Mawatha to get to our first destination – Uthuwankanda. The road was just a minute’s walk away from the junction and had been clearly marked by some tourism authority as the entry point to Uthuwankanda.

According to ancient folklore, Uthuwankanda is known as the hideout of local badass ‘Saradiyel’. The Sri Lankan Robin Hood was said to have used the miniature rock fortress at the very top of this mountain as his hideout, after unleashing his marauding acts on the unsuspecting British nationals who occupied Sri Lanka at the time.

After a short hike along a flat concrete road, we took a sharp turn to the left to come to the trail head. I’ve included the GPS coordinates as part of this post to aid anyone who can make use of it. There onwards, it was another short walk across pretty flat land until we reached the trail head. Once you reach the trail, you don’t actually need the coordinates. The trail is pretty visible with stepping stones, footpaths etc. A good eyesight and some common sense should be enough to get to the top J

You need to be careful of poisonous plants on the way. The trail is filled with plants like ‘Nambiriththa’, which can be pretty uncomfortable if you come into contact with them. Always carry water, soap/aloe vera etc as a precaution. If you do come into contact with them, wash the area with some water as quickly as possible and rub some aloe vera.

The mountain is pretty small. Its only about 400 meters or so the very top. The climb took just about two hours. Now here’s the interesting part. Just before you reach the little rock fortress, You have to surmount a pretty steep 45 degree rock incline. You don’t really need special equipment to do this as long as you have good shoes and good sense of balance and gravity. But climb this part under advice. There is a climbing pattern on the side of the rock. Use this.

However, from this point onwards you do need climbing skills and common sense should prevail. The path leads down to a mini valley between the first rock and the target rock/fortress. Once you make your way down to this little valley, you are faced with the real deal. The rock is easily 45 degrees in angel or even more. There is very little space to stand on and the winds can be pretty heavy. There’s only one relatively safe way to get to the top and that’s from the side of the rock. The safe way would be to use ropes and harnesses and get to the top. The unsafe way would be to try and be rock stars and land head first in Mawanella. We tried the rock star method with myself going first and making it half way up the side of the rock, but the sheer drop below me persuaded me to abandon that idea since i did not have the equipment for it.  Add to that the gushing wind breaks and this was a suicide attempt. So we crawled our way back to the first rock and spent close to an hour taking in the absolutely breathtaking scenery. Three sides were open spaces with cities and towns far below us. Behind us was the rock fortress. It was indeed a surreal experience.

One thing is for sure. Saradiyel was truly one badass mofo. Imagine marauding the British brass and making your way up to that rock fortress every single time. We left wondering how he was eventually caught since his little fortress was impenetrable thanks to mother nature. Then we were told upon our return that he was lured into the village by a secret lover who betrayed him to the British police. (Women i tell you.)

The hike down took just under an hour and by 9.30 am, we were on our way to the next mountain – the beautiful Bible Rock.

The blog post for that can be found here. Pictures of both Uthuwankanda and Bible Rock can be found on my Flickr profile right here or my travel buddy Prishan's Flickr account

Off to Bible Rock then

Ciao.

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