Mulawella Trail

The Mulawella Trail, also spelled Moulawella, is the half-day climb of the Sinharaja Rain Forest. It starts at the Kudawa entrance and rises about 400 m to a rock summit at about 760 m, passing from forest that was logged in the 1970s into forest that never was. It is the better choice if you have one morning at Kudawa, and it is much better documented than the longer Sinhagala Trail.

How long is the Mulawella Trail?

About 4 km each way, or about 8 km return. We measured this on the mapped footpath in OpenStreetMap, using elevation data for the heights, so it is a map figure rather than a field survey. The 2.4 km often quoted is too short for a walk from the Kudawa car park.

What is the route of the Mulawella Trail?

These distances are from the Kudawa car park. Heights are approximate.

The top is an open rock with a strong wind, and it turns slippery in rain. Walkers also describe a small waterfall and stream on the way.

What forest does the trail pass through?

In 1987, botanists at the University of Peradeniya published a guide to this trail with 12 stopping points, following a skid trail abandoned after logging in about 1975 to 1977 and going on into undisturbed forest. It described a circuit of 1.5 to 2 hours and does not mention a peak, so today's walk to the summit may not follow it exactly. Forty years on, it still explains what you are looking at.

• Old logging gaps: open ground where rattans climb and a spreading shrub moved in after the trees were taken out.
• The moist banks: pitcher plants and bamboo orchids in the open, tree ferns on a damp bank, and wild cardamom once gathered by villagers.
• Halmandiya Dola stream: once the water supply for the field station, with the ant-plant Humboldtia laurifolia beside it.
• Uncut forest: layered Mesua and Shorea forest with crowns at about 25 to 30 m, Mesua nagassarium rooted almost on bare rock, and the very rare calamander, Diospyros quaesita.

The same guide measured 23 to 25 °C and over 90% humidity inside the forest. A later survey along the stream recorded 63 fern species, 22% of them endemic.

What wildlife might you see?

Records tied to this trail itself are few, so treat this as what is possible. A pair of Sri Lanka Wood Pigeons was seen feeding on it in 2005. On the shared first section and around the Research Centre, birders regularly report the Sri Lanka Blue Magpie, the Spot-winged Thrush and the mixed-species flocks that make Sinharaja famous among birders.

Why is the forest here partly logged?

Timber extraction for plywood was permitted in 1968, and about 1,400 hectares of the western forest were selectively logged in the 1970s, with the Research Centre as the centre of the operation. Logging was banned in 1977 after public opposition. Sinharaja became a Biosphere Reserve in 1978, and a National Heritage Wilderness Area and World Heritage Site in 1988. On this walk you can see the difference between the two kinds of forest for yourself.

What are the rules and costs?

• Guide: a guide is required. Arrange one at the Kudawa ticket office or through your lodge. Reports conflict on whether the ticket includes the guide, so ask at the gate.
• Ticket: foreign adults were reported paying about LKR 2,700 in 2024 and 2025. Newer figures vary widely and no official table could be checked, so confirm the price and bring cash in rupees.
• Hours: the gate opens at about 06:00 to 06:30, with last tickets reported at about 16:30. Birds are most active early, so start at opening if you can.
• Closures: the Kudawa entrance was shut from 10 to 15 April 2026, so check before you travel.
• The law: under the National Heritage Wilderness Areas Act of 1988, you must not collect plants, disturb animals, pollute water or carry fire. The penalty can be a fine, up to six months in prison, or both.

How should you prepare?

• Leeches: expect them. Leech socks are sold at the entrance, and even these do not stop every leech. Wear long trousers and closed shoes.
• Water: carry at least 1.5 litres per person.
• Rain: there is no reliably dry month. January to March is the usual advice and August to September the second choice. Avoid the summit rock in heavy rain.
• Snakes: a green pit viper was seen beside a Kudawa trail in March 2025. There is no antivenom for the hump-nosed pit viper and its venom can damage the kidneys, so any snake bite needs hospital care, even if it looks minor.

Colombo to Kudawa is about 155 to 160 km and takes about 4 to 4.5 hours by road, through Ratnapura, Kalawana and Weddagala, so a night near Kudawa makes an early start possible.