Hunting Waterfalls near Colombo within a day. [Algama and Uduwaka Falls]

Since my last hike in knuckles range , I was unable go anywhere else for three months. But I was searching a lot about nice places to visit. Due to the rainy season it was impossible to do a good hike. Time passed and my internship began and it took me another month to settle there. I stay with my friend Bhashitha near Minuwangoda town. One day he told me that he saw some photos of a waterfall near this area in social media but he hadn’t any idea about the place. He browsed through social media for few minutes and finally found those photos. According to those photos it was Algama Falls but there is also another fall captured and not noted a name there. Because of that , we thought of it as a cascade of Algama Falls. And after that I went through few links in lakdasun.org about the Algama Falls , but only report I found useful is the report by Ashan ayya around year 2010. Then I searched Google Map to find a way to reach the waterfall. Google Map showed the location accurately with some reviews. So , there was no problem with the route. Then we fixed a date for the out.

It was a Saturday. The reason why we chose this Saturday is that we had to go to Kirindiwela to borrow a motor bicycle (CD 90) from my friend’s neighbor for our use. Our plan was to go there grab the bike and then go for the waterfall. We left from our place to Kirindiwela around 9 am. We reached my friend’s neighbor around 12pm and we spent couple of ours there and took the bike and started our journey around 2 pm. We used only Google Map to reach the Algama Falls. It was clearly pinned on the Google map. But the path from the main road to the waterfall was not visible on the map because of that I added the GPS coordinates of the place where we had to turn to the waterfall from Algama – Uduwaka Road below. When we reached the turning point (7.151397,80.172722) , it was around 3.15 pm. We had to turn our bike into the gravel road at the left side and it was concreted to some extent , but the condition of the road was not good. I got off from the bike and my friend drove bike from there onwards. It was around 700m from the main road to the waterfall. We parked bike at the bridge there and walked along the stream to the up. We found some cascades which were not much in height. They were around 4 –  10 meters. Along the stream we found a couple having a pre-shoot. From the beginning we had a doubt about the large waterfall which we saw from the photos is a cascade of a Algama fall. To clear that out we asked from the the people at the pre-shoot about that. They told us that it is not a cascade of Algama Falls and we can reach it after going around 4km along the Algama road towards Uduwaka from the place we turned left to reach Algama falls. After hearing that we changed our returning route and planned to go our place after watching the beauty of that fall too. We continued our journey towards the upside of the Algama falls after taking that decision and after going along the stream for 1km we reached the ending of the rock area and found a little stream surrounded by bushes which flowed very quitely. We stayed there for few minutes and returned back to the place where we parked our bike. On our way returning we didn’t forget to take some photos. All the photo credits goes to Bhashitha.

One of the little cascade photographed at the water level

Closer look of a little cascade

Rock holes filled with water

Some green photography by Bhashitha

Flowing view of the stream through leaves

Tea estate near the stream

Another scenery view through the leaves

Calm and quiet places of the stream

Me and Bhashitha at the highest cascade of the stream

Side view of the stream at the end we reached

Me watching the stream at the end we reached

We returned to the main road and went towards Uduwaka. On our way we asked about the large waterfall from a person near the road and he told us that “go straight for 2-3km and you guys can find the place easily since there are vehicles parked near the way to waterfall”. According to his instructions we went straight and found the way as he said. The mentioned name of the waterfall on notice boards was “Uduwaka Ella”. But when I googled that I was found that the waterfall is famed as “Dunumala Ella / Devin Penna Ella”. Finally we followed the gravel road towards the waterfall and reached there. When we reached , there were lots of people. According to my mind there were more than 50 people were bathing. It was too much crowded since it was a Saturday. If you need a calm view and a nice bath of this fall you should reach there early in the morning in the weekends. Me and my friend climbed to the top of the fall and watched around. Since the top was covered with trees , we couldn’t get a wide view. At the top , it was similar as the end we reached at Algama falls , which means that it was just a quite flowing stream. Bhashitha needed to have a bath and we stepped downward towards the bathing area. He had a bath for around half an hour. After that we went to the place where we parked our bike and returned back to our place marking the end of another efficient day out.

Crowded “Uduwaka Ella”

Portrait of the “Uduwaka Ella”

Another close portrait

Another close portrait

When water drops hits camera lens

Side view of the fall

side view

A selfy with bathing boy

Top of the fall

Selfy at the top

Beauty of bathing in a fall