Taxi to Sinharaja, private transfers at a fixed price

We collect from the door: a lodge in Deniyaya, a guesthouse in Kudawa or Weddagala, or a coastal hotel the evening before. On the northern side the car reaches Kudawa village and the Forest Department office, and waits there while you are in the forest; jeeps for the last climb are arranged in the village itself. On the southern side a car normally reaches the Pitadeniya counter, some thirteen kilometres from Deniyaya town by way of Pallegama, though the lane is one vehicle wide in places and meeting a tipper truck costs a few minutes of reversing. Birds are active from first light, so departures here are genuinely early: leaving Galle around four in the morning for a half-past-six gate is routine, and our drivers plan for it. Entrance and the compulsory guide are paid at the counter, separately from the transfer.

No road crosses the reserve, so your entrance is decided by where you slept, not by preference. Kudawa, on the northern edge past Kalawana and Weddagala, serves arrivals from Colombo, the airport, Ratnapura and Kitulgala. Deniyaya and its Pitadeniya gate serve the south: Galle, Mirissa, Tangalle, Udawalawe, Ella. A third gate, Morningside, lies far higher on the eastern side above Suriyakanda, beyond the tea estates, and is the preserve of researchers and herpetologists rather than a practical alternative. Crossing from one to the other means driving right around the massif, about three hours by way of Rakwana or Kolonna, so the side is chosen before the room is booked. At Kudawa the final four kilometres from the village up to the Forest Department gate are a rutted track no saloon car can climb; that stretch is done by local jeep or on foot.

Rain is the constant: three to five metres a year, and no month is reliably dry, though February to early April and August to September are the least wet. Bring a poncho rather than an umbrella, and a dry bag for the camera. Leeches are not a rumour: on a damp morning they find you within minutes, and the leech socks sold at the entrance save an hour of picking. Wear shoes you are happy to soak. Gates open at half past six, the ticket counter stops selling in the late afternoon, and the light under the canopy fails well before sunset. Phone signal is patchy to absent on the trails. Half a day inside is enough for most visitors, which leaves the afternoon free to drive on.

Birds are the reason to come. Around twenty of Sri Lanka’s endemic species occur here: Sri Lanka blue magpie, red-faced malkoha, green-billed coucal, ashy-headed laughingthrush, and the Serendib scops owl, first heard here in the mid-1990s, finally seen in January 2001 and described as a new species in 2004, the first bird added to the Sri Lankan list since 1868. The mixed feeding flocks (led by orange-billed babblers and racket-tailed drongos, and studied here continuously since the early 1980s) sweep past in a noisy wave of dozens of species, then leave an hour of near silence behind them. From Kudawa the Moulawella trail climbs to a lookout near 760 metres; Sinhagala is a full day and about fourteen kilometres there and back. From Pitadeniya a long walk follows the Gin Ganga to Duwili Ella. Purple-faced langurs and giant squirrels are overhead most mornings.