Group IV Sinharaja Field Trip

The Group IV Project is a science trip that our grade took right before winter break, from December 11th to December 13th. We were going to the Sinharaja Forest Reserve, which is the largest patch of primary (undisturbed) forest in Sri Lanka.

Day 1

 – Travelling and settling in

We traveled about three hours by bus to the entrance to the reserve, where we walked about 20 minutes to the lodge where we were staying. We saw some animals on our hike, including this small green snake.

We unloaded our bags and then ate lunch on a large deck overlooking the rainforest. After lunch, we were given a short explanation of what we were going to be doing on the trip. We were told that we would be helping a researcher survey plots of land within the rainforest to measure how well the forest is growing back after the British stopping logging the forest. To do this, we would section off a one square meter of forest, and count the number of plants in that area. We recorded that in an online survey, then set up another patch of land to measure. We didn’t start recording today (we would be doing all of our actual work tomorrow) but we did do a short practice just to make sure that everyone knew what to do. After that, we headed back to the lodge. We had a few hours of relaxation, then we prepared for a night walk. It looked like it wasn’t going to rain, so I just wore shorts and a t-shirt. We were looking for frogs, so most of us brought flashlights. We didn’t see any frogs, but we did see a really big spider.

About ten minutes into the hike, it started pouring down rain. This brought all of the leeches out onto the path, and they were everywhere. I got over 30 leech bite in the half hour that we were walking, and the combination of that and the rain made the walk the definite low point in the trip for me. After we finally made it back to the lodge, we were able to shower and have dinner. When I went to shower, I found a massive snail on the toilet.

Dinner was uneventful, and afterwards I read a book for an hour or two and went to bed. I had a difficult time sleeping because the bed was a bit too short for me and my feet hung off the end, but I eventually managed to drift off.

Day 2 – Data collection

I woke up around 6:30 (a bit early for me, even on school days) and walked over to the deck, which doubled as both the dining hall and the main communal area. I was one of the first people to wake up, and it was early enough that I got a chance to see the birds that feed in the morning.

I read my book until everyone else was up and about. I had toast for breakfast because I wasn’t very hungry, and then we were sorted into the groups that we would be a part of to collect our data. We took a short hike to the collection area, and then started collecting measurements. The things we tested included the slope of our plot, the pH of the soil, the humidity, the nitrate levels, and the amount of canopy cover. We also counted the number of plants in our plot and the size of each of them. The reason we did this was because we were investigating the extent to which this area of the Sinharaja rainforest is recovering from logging when the British colonized Sri Lanka. They imported Mexican Pine trees from the Caribbean and planted them here, which ruined a lot of the biodiversity in the rainforests. It was only in the 1980s that people here started clearing them out to let the natural rainforest grow back, and that process is still ongoing. There are still people monitoring the forest to make sure that everything is growing back properly, and we were assisting them in gathering the data that they need. It started raining about an hour after we started, so we headed back since we were almost done anyways. It wasn’t raining as hard as it did the night before, and it was actually kind of refreshing. After we ate lunch we had most of the afternoon free to do anything we wanted, but most of us just took a nap because we were so tired. Around 5:30 PM, the professor who started the original project to restore this section of Sinharaja gave us a lecture on the science behind what we were doing and more information about the rainforest. The lecture was very interesting, but it lasted for almost two hours and by the end I was even more exhausted than before my afternoon nap. Thankfully, there wasn’t anything planned after dinner and I was able to go straight to bed.

Day 3 – The hike and the trip back

I awoke early again on the final day, and waited for everyone else to wake up. The only plan for today was to go on a hike, eat lunch, and drive home. After breakfast, we started hiking. We were hiking up a mountain, and three of us had to turn back about 1/3 of the way through the hike to take one of our classmates (who had asthma and was having trouble breathing) back to the lodge. We ended up about 30 minutes behind the main group, so we decided to take a different way up to the mountain top (our guide said that it was a shortcut). The ‘shortcut’ was much steeper than the regular path, and by the time we reached the top I was exhausted and having a bit of trouble breathing from the exertion. The top of the mountain was beautiful and had a sweeping view over the rainforest.

We rested for about 15 minutes at the top, then hiked down. The hike down was a lot slower and easier than the hike up, and I managed to take pictures of some of the plants and animals that I saw.

We ate a quick lunch after our hike down, and then got on the buses to drive back to Colombo. The drive to Sinharaja was uneventful, but it was raining the entire way back. We saw a lot of flooding, and there were even parts of the road that had been flooded over by a river that flowed next to the road.  Besides that, the trip back was pretty boring. We arrived back at school around 5 PM, and I hailed an Uber to take me home.

Final thoughts

Looking back, I really enjoyed the trip as a whole. The first day was not great because there were a lot of leeches, but the second day was fine and the final day was really cool. I learned a lot about how ecological succession works and about rainforests in general. I have to say, it was nice to sleep in my own bed though.