Exploring a Cave under the Idalgashinna Railway Station

Year and Month	August, 2015
Number of Days	One Day Trip
Crew	3 (between 25-28 years of age)
Accommodation	Exploring, Hiking and Heritage
Transport	Sri Lanka Railway (The best medium)
Activities	Caving, Photography, Rock Climbing This cave was founded on 1997 by a villager. We meet him (Mr Muththulingam) and he told us the way.
Weather	Excellent
Route	Colombo -> Idalgashinna -> and return on the same route. Train is the most suitable transportation to Idalgashinna since it is a hidden rural village.
Tips, Notes and Special remark	You should downward a rocky plain, since there are no any step path. Don’t make too much of goods, if can take only water. Take a good powered Torch, LED Lamp or Light
Author	Ranshan Fernando
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We catch the Night mail from Pettah on Saturday and it took 8 hours to arrive Idalgashinna railway station. Then the time is around 4.00am. So, we slept on the rest room over there, since the climate is so cold. Even we couldn’t find a rail track also.

Sunday we start our journey around 6.30am after having a good tea from the only retail shop near the railway station. But we couldn’t have our breakfast since there are no bread yet. The bread will come from the Badulu Kumari around 7.45am every day.

So, we start our journey without having our breakfast. First up all we should walk from the top of the tea estate behind the railway station. It is about 250m from ths retail shop. Then we have to downward from the area to the forest. The forest (Hela) is fulfill with trees and rocks. We have to go down by catching the branches. Sometimes you might get fallen due to the ground instability. We went around 150m and found a rocky plain like an entrance to the cave. But that is not the exact place of the cave. It is the top of the cave and we can’t go in since it was covered with heavy rocks.

At Idalgashinna station around 4.00am

Early Morning around Haldummulla and Beragala area

Idalgashinna at morning sunshine

We started our journey

Down the Pallam

Lissana sulu hele bahina eka dangerous

Down the pallam

Gal thalawe harahata yamin

Gal udata nega pena pena yamin

So we went down again and it was little bit dangerous. Because there is no anything to catch and get down. By the way we put our fingers to the soil and came to the original place. OMG! It a amazing place, there is a small entrance and we sat down infront of it. There is no any path from the front of the cave since it is a Hela.

We get in to the cave and captured many pics, but we faced to a big trouble from the naughty bats. There are plenty of bats inside of this cave since it was their home. Nobody come to this cave since last 5 years due to a death of a guy around this place. He died in case of finding this place. This is really hidden from village. Any one can’t see this cave from the downward or upward. Since you come from a helicopter, you could not find this cave. Because there is a huge tree covered this cave from the front.

We spent 2 hours inside of the cave and walked along it. We jumped over the big rocks in side of the cave. We had a wonderful bath from the bats since there are plenty of their dirt. You have to touch rocks, but the all rocks are fulfill with their dirt. There is a small bad smell but you will fell it as a normal thing in few minutes. There are three ways in side of the cave so we explored every where and finally came back to the railway station to catch the train to Colombo at 12:45pm.