Sunday, 10 Sep 2023
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Text Pix & Map by Mahil Wijesinghe
The Kataragama Esala Festival, set around the historic Ruhunu Kataragama Maha Devalaya in the deep south of Sri Lanka, begins this week with much reverence. An awe-inspiring annual ritual, which has been held for centuries, the festival draws thousands of devotees from various ethnicities who pay reverence to God Kataragama, the deity with six faces and 12 hands, mounted...
For several decades, the Swami Rock in Trincomalee, one of the holiest sites of worship in the country had become more accustomed to the sound of gunfire than the chanting of prayers. The road leading to the sacred site remained deadly and desolate. But since the end of the war, devotees and tourists have been flocking in their thousands to pay homage to a place said to...
The sounds of birds in the wee hours in the jungle is soothing, as wild elephants come in search of food to the edge of the river bank where an electric fence blocks their way to the sacred site. Pilgrims feed the wild elephants as they are accustomed to visit the pilgrims’ rest.
Dawn is a fascinating time at the park. A curtain of mist enveloped the plain landscape,...
The setting is surreal – cloud-kissed hills, a landscape abundant in greenery in Pallebedda near Embilipitiya.The luxuriant vegetation of Ratnapura slowly disappears giving way to the aridity of the Southern Province. Across the hills, a soft breeze blows through the forest canopy and keeps us mesmerized. We drove down drinking in the beauty of nature further toward...
We set off in the wee hours of the morning to explore the not-so-well-known Kukuluwa rock cave temple situated on isolated forest patches on a hill at an elevation of over 2,000 feet. This peak wilderness forest has its own charm and serenity lying in the western lowland of the Sinharaja range near Kalawana in the Pimbura village in the Ratnapura district.
The site...
Text Pix & Map by Mahil Wijesinghe
From the most expensive seafood to the more reasonably priced every day fish, the wholesale market in Lellama in Duwa has it...