The mountain of moon, Sandamadala

Year and Month	8th January, 2017
Number of Days	One
Crew	5 (Sobasiri Team)
Accommodation	N/A
Transport	Motor Bicycles
Activities	Hiking, Exploring Nature, Waterfall Hunting, photography
Weather	Perfect
Route	Colombo -> Kurunegala -> Matale -> Naula -> Elahara Road -> Ambaba Junction -> Opalgala -> Kotagala Village
Tips, Notes and Special remark	Take enough water 2Lx2 Beware of elephants during dry season Ask the directions from the villagers Leech protection needed only during the rainy season Beware of Vipers at the Mana forest/mountain trail Please do not pollute the environment, bring your own garbage with you Keep only the foot prints
Author	Ranshan
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Sandamadala is a mountain situated at the northern border of knuckles massiff. We planned this hike during a dry day. We travelled to Naula via Kandy and Matale and then we turned to Elahera road and again turned to Opalgala road at Ambana junction.

We were lucky to see the Amban gaga with misty environment and for a while we thought that the whole river is like a volcano. We were there about 30 minutes and continue our journey to Opalgala. As I called to the Grama Niladhari before he warmly welcomed us and gave the instructions and other useful tips for the hike. However as we got to know we walked along the footpath which is goes parellaly to the stream and reached to the remote village called “Kotagala”. Kotagala is the base of Sandamadala but erronously a villager showed a path to a mountain which we reached mistakenly.

That mountain is Galbada Mountain and then we saw that the Sandamadala is infront of our view. However when we go back to the village suddenly we missed our path and then I called to Niroshan to know the path.And then he told us about the Kotagala village and some important landmarks overthere. After that we again came to Kotagala and met a farmer overthere. He was very innocent and he guided us to the base of the Sandamadala. After that we hiked through a mana busy land and sometimes we were falled due to the bushes. Within 45 minutes we came to the top of Sandamadala and had a rest. We identified Karagahathanna Mountain and some other familiar mountains in Matale side. Further we saw Moragahakanda and Galbada village and another hidden waterfall which is far away from Sandamadala.We spend our day and had two mountain experience and returned back to our vehicles around 4pm. Then we had a bath over the stream and had a chat with some villagers. After that we continue that road to Rattota and reached to Matale.