Two weeks before (12th February), my friends and I went on a road trip to visit Dowa rock temple, which is one of the oldest religious places located in Sri Lanka.For this journey my friends Anuhas, Anushka, Jayamini, Kavindu, Kulochana and Tharindu were joined.We started our journey from the Pambahinna junction, Balangoda which is near the University of Sabaragamuwa around 5:30 AM.We had joined 4 motorcycles for the journey where 2 riders can hit the road in each.We set forth our journey with the chilly morning breeze.

The day was a public religious holiday, therefore the roads were nearly empty. Therefore we had a very smooth ride in our vehicles which made a comfortable experience for us.The morning chilly breeze made our journey more entertaining.We rode our vehicle in Badulla-Colombo road, toward the Badulla district where the temple is located.On the way we experienced a slight interference as Vimukthi's motorcycle had a malfunction.But fortunately, we contacted a friend to lend us a motorcycle where we were able to resume the journey.

Around 8.00AM we reached Haputale town and the environment was very cold , even there was morning sunshine in that moment.In Haputale town, we parked our motorcycles and we got into a restaurant to have the breakfast before resuming the rest of our journey. We had a bellyful breakfast with Noodles and bread with Dhal and Sambol. As a refreshment, we all had Nescafe after the breakfast.After the breakfast, we continued our journey to the Badulla district. Within less than an hour ,we passed Bandarawela town .We enjoyed the magnificent mountain views and landscape in the Bandarawela town on the way.

At 10.30, we reached our destination, Dowa Rock Temple which is around 6km away from the Bandarawela town.Since it was a religious holiday, we experienced traffic jam near the temple, as many pilgrims were coming to visit the temple on that day.We parked our motorcycles inside the temple and we removed our shoes before entering into the temple grounds.My friends purchased flowers before worshiping the temple.We passed the main entrance of the temple, and we stepped down the staircase to reach the main temple

The main temple premises consists of temple building, bodhi and cave formation.Even though the premises was filled with pilgrims, it was a very calm environment.We entered the interior of the main temple to visit the Buddha statues,painting that explains the religious stories and other art works which were completed in the 18th century.The entire building consisted with stone works which is connected to the cave formation at the end.Mainly, the cave structure was used by King Walagamba in the 1st century to hide from the Indian invaders at that period.We witnessed awesome formation of stones behind the temple.It was a magnificent creation of nature.

The most iconic place of the temple is the Buddha image which has been carved on a vertical rock which is said to be constructed by King Walagamba himself while he was hiding in this place.The Buddha image has a Mahayana style in construction and more than 2000 year old. However, it was an incomplete construction, as King Walagamba had to flee from the place before completing the image.We stayed near the Buddha image for a long time as it was a calm place to linger.

After visiting the Dowa Rock temple, we visited Mahamewnawa Buddhist monastry which is located in Kumbalwela, nearly 6 km away from our place.As it was holiday, we experienced more difficulty to access the monastery due to the pilgrim crowd. However, after entering the monastery, we all forgot our tiredness, as it was a very wonderful place.Specially, we forget the tiredness from climbing the mountain to reach the monastery.We were able to reach the monastery around 1 PM.We were able to visit the temple inside the monastery and interior temple building and other premises. The view from the top of the monastery was magnificent. We stayed there nearly for an hour enjoying the calm environment of the monastery.

After the visit to Mahamewnawa Monastery we put an end to the journey. We had our lunch and evening tea on the way.We were able to reach the Pambahinna junction around 6PM after completing our wonderful journey