The second-largest blowhole or marine geyser popularly known as “Hunnanaya” is located in the small fishing village of Kudawella. Hummanaya is a popular tourist site down south of Sri Lanka. It is located few kilometres away from the famous tourist destinations of Dickwella and Tangalle. 

Although Hummanaya is a popular tourist site, Sri Lanka has not issued a postage stamp till 2016. When I was at the Philatelic Bureau, Sri Lanka we planned to issue a set of stamps depicting the sites that have a high potential of attracting tourists but not featured on a stamp till that. Initially, we have selected around 50 sites and do research on them about the feasibility and how visually depicted on a small piece of paper in the size of 41mm x 30mm. Finally, we selected 24 sites to do the photographs and sketches for the production of stamps.

Hummanaya is also among them. But we want to do the stamp in a different angle of water fountain shoot up rather than most visitors have seen on the angle from the viewing platform. Thus we decided to get the photographs from the seaside of the blowhole. 

If my memory is correct we went to the site on October 19th 2015. Our crew included two stamp designers, my fellow officer, me and our driver. We leave from Colombo early morning and reach Kudawella beach around 8 am. Without wasting much time, we were able to arrange a boat to go to the sea.

About 15 to 20 minutes boat ride we were able to reach near to in front of the blowhole. The scenery is amazing and breathtaking. 

The blowhole area is rocky cliffs. The rock boulder in the middle forms a littoral cave. The high energy waves from the open sea received to this rocky cliff. When the sea waves hit the rock cliff water goes through the catchment entrance to the compression cave and eject from the expelling port at the top of the cave a few meters high into the air due to hydraulic pressure. This is a rarest spellbinding geographical creation of mother nature that owing to few countries in the world.

Our stamp designers want to go much close as we can to get better pictures. However, our boat rider does not agree to do so due to the windy climate and rough sea waves of the day.

Nearly about 2 hours of breathtaking sceneries we returned to the shore of Kudawella which is also a beautiful beach. We saw a few foreign tourists relaxing at the beach.

Then we start to walk towards Hummanaya on the normal route. It is about 10 minutes work from the main road. We can hear the sound of “hoo” at a greater distance from the site and that tells us the blowhole is active. This “hoo” sound creates the name Hummannaya for this site. 

The path to Hummanaya goes through the houses of the village. Since Kudawella is a fishing village fishes cooked in different recipes are sold by most of the houses on either side of the path.

There is a small information centre and ticket counter. The entrance fee for foreign tourists is USD 5.00. You have to climb up few steps to a small hillock before come to the viewing platform. It is better not to go too much closer to the blowhole because you will get the spray from the seawater. The spectacular water fountain of the Hummanaya blowhole can shoot up to 29.87m (98 feet) depending on the strength of the sea waves. It occurs in intervals of several minutes. Normally, from April to September you can see the higher water shoot ups.  

Stamp issued for Hummanaya blowhole on 12.12.2016

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