Yala National Park, hidding elephants...galore of leopards...

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First, little news from Bangkok. The higgest tide have passed by, and all of Central Bangkok is still on dry land. CNN and BCC are pretty acurate in their statments, but they forget to say something simple. Millions in Bangkok haven't seen the floods. We have supermarkets full of food, with all fresh products available. What is difficult to find is bottles of water. All the imported bottles of water you want, at a premium price, and no local brands. But beside this, everything is available.

Sadly, this is not true for the thousands of km2 around Bangkok, and the millions who live with their feet in water. That water is not always safe! Hope the water will go down fast, but we all know it could take weeks in some places.

Back to our next stop in Sri Lanka.

You can do a lot of different things in Sri Lanka, and one of them is safari. Yala National Park is in the South East corner of Sri Lanka. You are not close to Colombo anymore, but beside this, it is pretty easy to reach.

This place was also heavily hit by the tsunami back on 26th December 2004. Let me say first that we will never forget about that day. Ten of Thousands died not only in Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, but also in Sri Lanka. What is crazy is this death toll could have been easily avoided if warning systems had been put in place. The wave took over four hours to reach Sri Lanka. You do a lot in four hours!

Back to Yala National Park. The place is pretty huge and divided in five blocks. Only one of those blocks is open for safari involving tourists. The parks is well-kown for elephants and leopards. They have hundreds of elephants and 35 leopards. This would be the first safari experience for Tiffany and Leslie.

The night before we sorted out a safari car and driver. The park is around 30 minutes from Tissa where we were based for the night. The car would leave Tissa at 5am, and we would be back around 10am. We had our own car for this little family trip. Cost of the morning, 110usd total...not cheap, but not that bad for four of us!

Having done few safaris in Africa, I warned the kids not to be too sure to see leopards, and to be happy with the elephants. How wrong was I! We saw one elephant...in the dust, little one...from the back...not even a picture to show you. I thought we would see a lot more elephants later on...but no. They are waiting for the rain here. Weather is very dry and hot, and the elephants spent their time hiding in the high bushes.

We saw hundred of births, serpent eagle, strokes, kingfisher and few others which the names escaped me now. We also saw a lot of spotted deers, crocodolies, jackals, wild boars, monitor lizards...and I'm sure I forget few....

But the best, we saw four leopards. The first one was hiding in the forest. He was having a nap on the ground, some 50 meters away from us. Not easy to get a close look, but we were all already pretty happy...Tiffany and Leslie had spotted their first leopard!

Later on, few hundred meters further, we spotted three cub leopards...well, we didn't spotted them on our own, there was around 10 safari cars already around us! One of the young was on the ground, just in front of us. The two other leopards were playing in the tree, just below 100 meters from us. That was a moment, by that time, our little safari experience was a full success....for the elephants, it will be for another time.

This was it for Tissa. Tissa itself didn't impressed us. We had a clean room for four of us at the Pala hotel (30usd, with hot water!). We did try to find nice food around, but that was a failed attempt. Come here for the safari...and once you are done, leave.

Leaving Tissa was another adventure. Our next stop, the beach of Mirissa, 120km to the West. I couldn't find a van, or taxi at a reasonnable price...so we went three wheelers...this is for our next entry...

If you do come to Sri Lanka, make sure you keep a morning for a great safari...a fun experience!

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Comments

[Greg Harvey]

Great Blog!
Great blog. I am planning to go to Sri Lanka to photograph leopards in 2013. Your blog was helpful. Thank you. www.harveywildlifephotography.ca