Sinharaja

Dense, dark, wet and mysterious - Sinharaja is a primeval forest for meditation, relaxation and for scientific exploration. This relatively undisturbed expanse of primary forest is a Sri Lankan heritage - the last patch of sizeable lowland evergreen Rain Forest still remaining more or intact or undisturbed in our island.

The forest is steeped in deep legend and mystery. The word Sinharaja means, lion (Sinha) king (Raja) and the popular belief it that the legendary origin of the Sinhala people in Sri Lanka is form the descendants of the union the lion king who once lived in the forest and a princess.

Today, the spirit of the legend remains captured in solitude in the silent forest and the rising mist of the early dawn. More than time however separates the modern explorer in the Sinharaja forest from its legendary inhabitants, man has rapidly penetrated the seemingly inaccessible wilderness of the Sri Lanka's rainforest which once covered perhaps over 100,000 ha. of the South Western hills and lowlands. The present reserve is but a glimpse of its former glory, occuphying a narrow silver of land 21 km. in length and 3.7 km. in width, covering 11187 ha. of undisturbed and logged forest, scrub and fern land. It was declared an International Man and Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1978, then a National Wilderness Area in 1988 under the National Heritage Site in 1989.

To the casual observer, the forest represents a tropical rain forest with a dense tall stand of trees, steep and rugged hills etched by numerous rocky streams and rivulets. The value of forests such as Sinharaja are well known for their functions as watersheds and store houses of great biological wealth. It is a rich treasure treasure trove of nature with a great diversity of habitats and a vast repository of Sri Lanka's endemic species found no where else in the world. Sinharaja therefore, represents an irreplaceable genepool, a refugia for all those rare and endangered forms of life, both fauna and flora.