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.