Balapitiya River Safari and Nature Tour from Colombo

Overview

A long day out of Colombo to the Balapitiya waterways, where a low boat works through mangrove channels and around the islands of the Madu Ganga. Lunch is grilled in front of you, and the driving is a fair share of the eight to ten hours.

What to expect

You are collected in Colombo and driven south, roughly two hours each way. At the river you transfer to a flat, stable boat that runs the open water first and then turns into channels narrow enough for the branches to close overhead. Somewhere in the middle the boat pulls in for the food, and the rest of the time is spent looking — at the banks, the birds and whatever the water is doing.

The trees plant their own seedlings

Mangroves do something almost no other tree does: their seeds germinate while still attached to the parent. What drops into the water is not a seed but a finished seedling, a green spear thirty centimetres long, which floats until it grounds in mud and then puts down roots where it lands. Look at the surface as you pass and you will see them drifting upright, waiting for somewhere shallow.

Roots that breathe

The tangle you are passing through is a breathing apparatus. Mangrove mud holds almost no oxygen, so the trees push pencil-thin roots up into the air to take it in, and at low water you can see thousands of them standing proud of the surface like a bed of nails. The same tangle is a nursery: young fish and prawns shelter in it because nothing large can follow them in.

Sixty-four islands, one household

The lagoon holds around sixty-four islands, of which only a handful are inhabited. One is a single house on a scrap of ground. Others carry a temple, a cinnamon plot, a few coconut palms and nothing else. The boat threads between them close enough to see washing on a line and a canoe pulled up on the bank.

Where the salt stops

The river is fresh at one end and seawater at the other, and everything growing along it sorts itself by how much salt it can stand. That gradient is why the vegetation changes as you go: different mangrove species take over at different points, and the birds follow them. Kingfishers work the brackish middle, cormorants sit out on the open water, and monitor lizards move along the banks with no interest in the boat.

Lunch is cooked in front of you

The seafood is grilled where you can watch it happen rather than arriving from a kitchen you never see, which also means you get an unhurried hour off the water in the middle of the day.

Practicalities

Four hours or so of the day is spent in the vehicle, so take something to read for the road. The boat is open, the sun on the water is fierce, and there is nowhere to hide from it. Cancellation is free up to forty-eight hours ahead.