Knuckles Mountain

 Knuckles Mountain 1515 m

Knuckles is one the most important bio-diversity environments with a range of mountains and a great

 water and wildlife resources. The Knuckles National Heritage and Wilderness Area or the Knuckles Mountain Range is a mountain range that covers an area of 155 sq km. The forest contains five major Forest formations and includes a wide variety of uncommon and endemic fauna & flora. The knuckles are a mountain range with fascinating and out-of-this-world mountain scenery. A number of large mammals like Elephants, Leopards, Sambhur, Deer, a large number of reptiles, birds, and fishes, etc. are found in abundance at the knuckles range. Out of the many endemic birds and reptile species, the Blotched Filamented Barb & Martins tine Barb (Fish), Tenant's Horned Lizard, and the Marbled Cliff Frog are endemic to this mountain range.

Loved by travelers for its beauty Knuckles mountains has become a hot spot in eco-tourism in Sri Lanka.

 Pidirutalagala Mountain  2534 m

Sri Lanka's highest mountain which is 2534 m above sea level, it will take you through some exciting

and anxious moments because of its difficulty in getting to the top, but the climb is worth your effort

 because it will take you through some beautiful scenery that you won't forget. One will come across

 beautiful small waterfalls because many waterfalls begin from this mountain. 

 There is no island in the world., Great Britain itself not excepted., that has attracted the attention of authors in so many distant ages and so many different countries as Ceylon. There is no nation in ancient or modern times possessed of a language and literature, the writers of which have not at some time made it their theme. Its aspect, its religion, its antiquities, and productions, have been described as well by the classic Greeks, as by those of the Lower Empire; by the Romans; by the writers of China, Burmah, India, and Kashmir; by the geographers of Arabia and Persia; by the medieval voyagers of Italy and France; by the annalists of Portugal and Spain; by the merchant adventurers of Holland, and by the travellers and topographers of Great Britain. ………..

Copied by  reference of Ceylon – an account of the Island physical, historical and topographical (1859)

by James E. Tennent

 

 

 

 Ancient Reservoirs and Irrigation Systems of Sri Lanka 

Irrigation systems of ancient Sri Lanka consist of a large number of village reservoirs to gigantic reservoirs.

In Sri Lanka, there are over 30,000 reservoirs, the majority of which date from the third century BC to the 12th century.

In the third century BC, Abaya Wewa was the first large reservoir to be constructed in recorded history. Since that time, Sri Lankan tank builders have developed a remarkable skill for managing big bodies of water, enabling them to construct enormous reservoirs that no other civilization could have imagined.

As stated in H. Parker;s book "Ancient Ceylon.", an irrigation engineer who was in charge of rebuilding several historic irrigation reservoirs in the late 1800s, Europeans didn't begin using the valve pits in their reservoirs until the middle of the 18th century.

but  Sri Lankan irrigation experts  inventioned the "Biso Kotuwa" valve pit, which could easily control the outflow of very big water bodies, in the third century BC that inspired Sri Lankan irrigation experts to construct such enormous reservoirs.

The incredible instrumentation precision of the old irrigation systems is another advancement. 

The ancient irrigation engineers first discovered that the Kala Wewa in Pollonaruwa was created on a little raised ground compared to Tissa Wewa in Anuradhapura when king Dathusena (459-477 AD) built Yodha Ela, also known as Jayaganga. Then, in order to transport extra water from the Kala Wewa to the Tissa Wewa, he constructed the 54-mile (87-kilometer) Yoda Ela, which has a gradient of 6–12 inches per mile (about 10–20 cm per kilometer).

Experts are still perplexed as to how these engineers were able to reach such precision.

 

Sri Lanka Dive Sites

Over 100 Sri Lanka Dive Sites are related to historical shipwrecks in Sri Lankan waters. They are scattered around the country, and there may be many unknown historical shipwrecks around the country. Most of the identified historical shipwrecks belong to the colonial period, and the oldest shipwreck site identified is the 2000-year-old Godawaya Shipwreck Site, the oldest shipwreck site in the Asia-Pacific Region. Most of the identified shipwreck sites were in service from 1850 to 1950. The deepest known shipwreck lies 65-67 meters under the sea.