Summary of the Trip

Day 1 – Meet the Chief Wanniyaleththo in the Veddah village and participate in a traditional ceremony

Day 2 – Second visit in the village during which you will have a fascinating insight to the traditional hunting methods

Day 3 – Departure

After lunch, you will proceed to Dambana where the Sri Lanka's native Veddah tribes reside and work for preserving their ancient traditions and language. The around thousand Veddahs living in Dambana are essentially hunter-gatherers, but the modern days have made them more and more dependent on ecotourism and other community development projects.

Detailed Itinerary

Day 1

Day 1 - Dambana

SCHEDULE

Arrival to Dambana.
Traditional lunch at the campsite.
Visit the Veddah village in the afternoon.
Meet the Chief and witness the traditional ‘Kiri Kohara’ dance.
BBQ dinner and overnight stay at the campsite (FB).

The Veddah living in the jungle village of Dambana preserve a direct line of descent from the island’s own Neolithic community. After years of existing in a simple way, while reliant on hunting for survival, they now find themselves in a strange predicament - aptly described by Ms. Christine Wilson. “Their present situation is even more demanding and arduous. On one hand they are fighting to keep their members from getting commercialized and on the other hand, the authorities blame them for getting commercialized and keep away from looking into their grievances. They are fighting a lone losing battle”.

In one recent interview the Chief Uruwarige Wanniyaleththo said that his greatest fear is that he will not be able to stop the death of the Veddah way of living. Since their livelihood is now changed completely, they are depending more and more on earning money to sustain them.

BEHOLD THE WAY OF THE VEDDAHS

"Learned to know and love the Veddahs for simplicity, a special kind of decency among themselves that is harder to find today. As forests receded and vanished to make way for development the shy jungle people were netted into inevitable proximity with the newcomers against all their instincts."

Christine Wilson, quoted in the preface of her father's book about the Veddah, Wild Ceylon (R.L. Spittle)