Camping Trip With The Family to Hawagala Mountain Peak

It has been two days since we returned from our hike to Hawagala Mountain Peak, Belihuloya without any notable incidents like vehicle accidents or breakdowns. I thank God for that. (It took me 4 days to publish this post since it wasn’t easy to organize the photos) But I still feel the physical and mental exhaustion after ascending and descending the hike to the mountain peak and spending a night in the freezing cold campsite inside a tent. What an experience it was!

Truly amazing!

Above is an image of the sunrise captured in the next day.

I enjoyed each and every moment during the preparation for the journey since we had to prepare everything from the beginning. 

I enjoyed each moment ascending feeling tired in the middle of the hike taking deep breaths, panting while absorbing the view around the trail.

I enjoyed each second I spent with my three daughters and my wife on the mountaintop.

I enjoyed each moment on the top of the mountain in the campsite, viewing the scenery around, the mist, the mountain range, the sunset, the full moon in the middle of the night, the sunrise the next day and watching how other people enjoyed the time there.

And also I’m enjoying the revisiting of the memories of the journey with my children and wife. It’s truly enjoyable. 

I can’t unravel all the experiences I had there through words in this post; the set of my vocabulary is not enough for me to express my feelings I absorbed during the journey and after the journey. But I can try to describe the emotions in my head now. But this post is about my initial experience of the journey.

Even after the mental exhaustion caused by driving to and from the destination, constant leech attacks by the time we parked the vehicle to ascend and to the point we got home, mild dehydration caused by the lack of water, physical exhaustion due to lack of a proper meal, the anxiety caused by the fact that there were no toilets in the campsite, and lack of sleep due to the cold weather along with gusty wind didn’t make me, my wife or children have thoughts that this would be our last camping experience we will ever have. We embraced each and every discomfort as positive experiences in our lives since all of the above were our first regardless of how we perceived them at the moment. I hope to extend the duration of the discomfort in a future hike.