Know Before You Go

This widely-distributed endemic monkey has many subspecies and many names. Commonly called the purple-faced leaf monkey, the montane race, found in Nuwara Eliya and Horton Plains, is also known as the bear monkey.

Both the Sigirya and Polonnaruwa reserves have large numbers of troops, but being almost exclusively leaf eaters, they spend much more of their time high in the trees than do the Hanuman langurs.

The montane subspecies is generally very shy, but habituated troops can be seen at Nuwara Eliya’s Hakgala Botanic Gardens.