Sri Lanka 2013

If you want to catch a glimpse of one of the 25 leopards in Yala National Park you have to be patient, drive slowly around the park all day peering at every tree with a limb not too far from the ground, and even then you may not be lucky. We finally got lucky a half hour before the park closed for the day.

The knock on the door came at 4:30 AM. Ray and I had travelled by bus from Mirissa to Tissa (Tissamaharama) the day before and now we were joining Sanne and Pieter, from the Netherlands, on an all day safari to Yala. If we wanted to be at the park for the opening at 6 AM, we had to leave our hotel at 5 AM. It was a cool and bumpy ride in our open sided jeep over pitted and rutted dirt roads, made worse by heavy rains the previous week. We were glad the skies were clear for our visit. While we waited for our driver to arrange our day passes, a wild pig with a long snout ambled over beside the jeeps looking for handouts. I think it was a semi-pet of the snack stand just outside the park entrance.

Finally we were on our way through the main gates. We saw a fair number of birds in the morning, especially peacocks, egrets, painted storks, herons, eagles, colourful green and blue bee-eaters,Sri Lankan Jungle fowl, the National Bird, horn bills and other water birds. A few of the peacocks were putting on a show, strutting with their tails fanned out, trying to attract the attention of the peahens. There were small herds of spotted deer, lots of water buffalo, grey langur monkeys, crocodiles, monitor lizards, but no leopard.

Yala NP covers over 1200 sq km stretching down to the southeast coast on the Indian Ocean. The beach was our breakfast and lunch rest stop. The 2004 tsunami destroyed two large resorts full of workers and tourists on the beach within the park that have yet to be rebuilt. All that remains are the foundations of two small bungalows. Four stainless steel panels, curved to depict the height of the tsunami waves and a granite marker stand as a memorial in front of the bungalow ruins. There was no warning for the tsunami and not even any way to spread the word to other vulnerable areas. The government now claims to have a good warning system in place that Sri Lankans hope never has to be tested.

After breakfast we drove past a young male elephant happily munching in the bushes beside the road and a bit later we slowly followed a big male elephant ambling along the road before it turned into the bushes. Twice we met up with other jeeps stopped by the side of the road. They had just seen a leopard cross the road. We saw both adult sized leopard prints and smaller cub sized prints in the mud beside the road, but no leopard. Finally we were in the right place at the right time. We were on our way back to the park gates with less than 30 minutes to go before the park closed at 6 PM. Just ahead of us was a traffic jam of jeeps. Something was up. The word spread that a leopard was stretched out on the limb of a tree just in from the road. I had a hard time picking out the leopard in the middle of the foliage. Pieter, the Dutch fellow with us said he knew where it was. He took a photo with my camera and when I zoomed it on the camera, there it was! The spotted body was visible but the head was obscured by branches and leaves. It had been a long day with lots of driving around trying to sight the animals. The animals were not as numerous as in the African Parks but there were plenty for us to photograph and identify. We arrived back at our hotel about 7:30 PM, tired and hungry but pleased with our day in the park.