Camping at Meemure

Year and Month	January, 2013 (25th, 26th, 27th)
Number of Days	Three Day Trip
Crew	7 (29 – 40 years of age)
Accommodation	Day 1 : at Village house (Nawarathne Ayya’s House) Day 2 : Camping in a paddy field
Transport	By a hired van
Activities	Camping & Trekking, Photography
Weather	Day 1 Heavy rain during morning hours Day 2 & 3 Sunny
Route	Colombo -> Kandy -> Thannekumbura -> Raja Mawatha -> Adikarigama -> Victoria -> Hunnasgiriya -> Loolwaththe -> Corbet’s Gap -> Kaikawala -> Meemure Return on Meemure -> Kaikawala -> Corbet’s Gap -> Loolwaththe -> Hunnasgiriya -> Kandy -> Colombo
Tips, Notes and Special remark	This trip was planned to be a Hike to ‘Lakegala’, but with the heavy rain on day 1 we had to drop that idea. Meemure is a remote and less spoiled village. So please don’t spoil their lives, culture and respect them always. There are a lot of Ticks in most of the village houses. Be prepared for that if you are going to stay in a village house. (But we never experienced that this time at Nawarathne’s place) Village is now more commercialized compared to the past, but the beauty still remains. Leave only footsteps & bring only memories
Author	Dilhan Jayakody
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This was my 3rd visit to Meemure and this was after 6 years of the 2nd visit. When I had my first visit in 2004, it was the time that Meemure was getting popular with ‘සූරිය අරණ’ film. In those days it was a village which was hardly developed. That means there was only a single vehicle to the entire village and we could see people carrying goods by ‘තවලම’. But now they have several vehicles, Tuk Tuks, Motor bikes, etc. and no ‘තවලම’ anymore. Most importantly now they have electricity from a mini hydro project.

But it still preserves the beauty and glory of Lakegala and surroundings.

We started our journey from Colombo by 5.00AM and we had breakfast at Kandy. Then we went to the Adikarigama via Raja Mawatha to visit Victoria Power generation complex. After visiting that we came to the Victoria Dam observation center via Victoria Dam by crossing the Mahaweli River. Then we came to Hunnasgiriya and had lunch there. We had to buy some stuff from there and by 3.30PM we started our journey from Hunnasgiriya to Meemure. Distance is 31KM. But it took 3.5 hours for us to reach Meemure.

Roadside Water fall – Hunnasgiriya – Click Image to Enlarge

More random water falls with rain

First 15 km was a little OK, but then it was worse. Road condition was terrible and thick mist was there. You couldn’t see even 2, 3 meters ahead. We came to the Corbet’s Gap and had little rest there. It would have been a fantastic place if the mist was not there. With the mist and heavy wind we were not able to stay longer there and so we started the journey again

Thick Mist at Corbet’s Gap (අට්ටලමෙට්ටුව)

Corbet’s Gap

Thereafter road was terrible; we had to get down from the van several times and literally “make temporary repairs” to the road before moving the van.

In the middle of a lot of obstacles, by 7.00PM we were able to reached Meemure. It was night time by the time we reached there; and due to the heavy rains during the day time it was very difficult for us to setup the tent. So we decided to stay at one of our good old friend Nawarathne’s place for that night. He has built a separate section attached to his house to rent out to visitors. It was quite a good place and can be recommended for others as well. After having chats with a few villagers we went to sleep.

Next day we got up early morning and the plan was to hike Lakegala. After having breakfast we came to the Meemure village center and had a chat with several villages about Lakegala hike. But their advice was not to hike Lakegala that day due to the heavy rains during the last couple of days. They said the rocky trail will be too slippery and would be too dangerous. With that information we had to drop our idea of hiking. Then what to do…..

Everybody decided to setup the tent and have a cool dip on ‘Heen Ganga’ and relax the evening by experiencing the beauty of Meemure. After setting up the tent we all went to the ‘Heen Ganga’ to have a bath. It was fantastic.

Evening we relaxed and met several villages and had casual chats about their day to day life and history about Meemure.