Do Rafting on cold frothy water in Kelani River at Kitulgala.

White-water Rafting, What an attractive and adventurous sport indeed. So if you are looking for some adventures for your milk and water life, you are about to find the real place which will conflate some adventurous experiences to your life. You can meet this experience at Kitulgala, a calm and quiet small town situated in the wet zone rainforest to the west of Sri Lanka about 100km from Colombo on the Colombo-Nuwaraeliya main route.......
 Kitulgala has got its name due to the huge Caryota urens (Sri Lankans call it kitul) population which is used to produce Kitul honey (a delicious syrup made by concentrating the sap of kitul flower by heating), jaggery (crystallized sap), kitul toddy (a liqueur made by fermenting the sap) and kitul flour made by milling the pith of the log. If you come here don’t forget to sip some kitul toddy (“Raa” in Sinhalese) and enjoy some “kitul talapa” (a delicious Sinhalese food made with kitul flour).

Do you remember the academy award winning movie “The Bridge over the River Kwai” produced on 1950s? If it’s so you might commemorate these sceneries. Concrete bases of the bridge which was built for the film set on Kelani River at Kitulgala still remain with the attraction of thousands of fans. Rafting is not the only thing you can experience in here because the Keleni Forest Reserve that has a highly diversified bird progeny is a plumy place for bird watching. Kitulgala is very famous for wild bananas, both yellow and red. These are pretty tastier than agrarian ones. You can see a lot of rubber trees but they are foreign.
Kitulgala is a wet evergreen forest. But it is hard to see all the attributes of a wet evergreen forest like Sinharaja due to human influence. Expected rainfall is too high that Kitulgala is one of the wettest places in Sri Lanka. A dry weather is expected at the beginning of the year especially in February.

Like I said before, Keleni Forest Reserve is a good place for bird watching. It’s possible to find most of the bird species live in wet zone rainforests but incomparable with the huge bird population in Sinharaja. Endemic birds like Spurfowl, Green-billed Coucal and Spot-winged Thrush are plentiful. The recently found endemic bird spacies called Serendib Scops Owl can be seen rarely in Kitulgala.

Kithulgala Forest Reserve

The Kithulgala forest is a secondary rain forest situated beside the Kelani River, one of our longest rivers. There is a tributary flowing through the forest to this river. The forest reserve has a high biodiversity. Though it is mostly secondary forest, it's faunal and floral diversity is very similar to a primary forest. Wild boar, Toque Macaque, Purple faced leaf monkey, and Barking deer are some of the interesting mammal species.

Among the interesting bird species Red faced Malkoha, Ceylon Blue Magpie, Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher, Frog Mouth and Layard's Parakeet are outstanding

 

Destinations » Kithulgala

Kitulgala is located southwest of enchanting Kandy & north of famous mountain “Adam’s Peak“. The location of David Lean’s classic in 1957, Oscar-winning film ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai‘, Kitulgala is the Sri Lanka’s favourite village for White water rafting. To make it easier for you, there is a paved pathway to the exact main location of the film. For the birders, Kitulgala is irresistible too: 38 species of birds are found here. For the shutterbugs the limitless green & green rainforest serves endless landscapes
Kitulgala is a small peaceful village set about halfway of the scenic main road descending gently from the hill country (Central highlands) to wet lowlands. The village is well known for its Kitul Pani (Kitul palm honey) production too. It’s a beautiful setting; the scenery is particularly dramatic hereabouts, with sheer-sided, thick rainforest-covered hills plunging down to the wild waters of River Kelani.

Scene creation of the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai

The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 British World War II film by David Lean based on the novel The Bridge over the River Kwai by French writer
 French writer Pierre Boulle. The film is a work of fiction but borrows the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–43 for its historical setting. It stars William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and Sessue Hayakawa. The scene creation of the film was done in Sri Lanka and many of them were at Kitulgala area including the bridge explosion.
In 1997, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected for preservation in the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry.

Agriculture

The agriculture around Kitulgala is typical of the hilly wet zone. The Solitary Fishtail Palm, Caryota urens, which is called Kitul in Sri Lanka, gives rise to the town's name. Its sap is concentrated into a delicious syrup, not dissimilar to maple syrup, and crystallized as jaggery. It is also fermented to make palm wine. The pith is used to make sago, and the fibres to make rope.


Bananas of both red and yellow varieties are grown. The yellow bananas are only some 8 cm long, but are sweeter and tastier than the commercial strains available in the West. Rubber trees are also grown on the higher areas.
Many birders stay at Kitulgala. This area has most of the rainforest bird species that are found at the World Biosphere Reserve at Sinharaja, although in lower numbers. However, the secondary forest and cultivation at Kitulgala is more open than the pristine woodlands of Sinharaja, and elusive
 endemic species like Sri Lanka Spurfowl, Green-billed Coucal and Spot-winged Thrush may be easier to see.

Features

Large numbers of people make the excursion from Colombo at weekends to enjoy the beautiful scenery, play in the river, and have an excellent rice and curry lunch at the local restaurants.
The Kelani river is wide at Kitulgala, but it is shallow apart from a deep channel near the opposite bank, so in the drier months it provides a safe and attractive place to swim, wash and play.
The river can be crossed by walking out across the shallows and crossing the deep channel in a dugout canoe, which is stabilised with an outrigger.


with an outrigger.
Sri Lanka's most recently discovered bird, the Serendib Scops Owl was originally heard calling by Deepal Warakagoda in these forests.
The hills above the rubber plantations also have Mountain Hawk Eagle, Crested Treeswift and Layard's Parakeet.