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Published: January 22nd 2010
Wild Elephant
This one minus half his tail for some reasonDuring one of our strenuous days in Ella the idea of an overnight stop in Yala National Park came up. The five of us (Sarah, Roly, Emma, Scott and I) decided to hire a car to drop us in Tissa so that we could do a morning safari the following day before going our separate ways. The drive form Ella to Tissa was, in typical Sri Lankan style, absolutely gorgeous; rolling hills, deep valleys, jungle, waterfalls and rice paddies.
On arrival in Tissa we checked into the hotel and began the hard task of bargaining about the price of a 5am - 12pm safari in Yala National Park with the hotel owner. His initial price was about 4500rupees per person; far higher than the price that was suggested in Lonely Planet. Throughout the bargaining process we decided to work out all the costs for entering the park just to see how much he was ripping us off. After considering everything, including his overpriced jeep (7000rupees instead of the 4500rupees in LP), we worked out that the maximum price per person should have been 3800rupees; quite a lot different to his initial offer. However, knowing how much the jeep should have
cost we decided that we were willing to pay a maximum of 3500rupees per person. After about an hour or so of making little headway on the price we decided to go for a walk, grab a drink and ask around about prices at a few other places.
As we walked past the petrol station we asked a jeep driver how much the jeep would cost. He quickly replied with 4500rupees and confirmed our suspicions about being totally ripped off so we headed back to the hotel to bargain hard until we got the jeep for 3500rupees. We grabbed seats at the hotel’s restaurant and prepared our battle plan for confronting the owner. Just as we finalized our plan of attack he came over and said ‘OK 3500rupees per person’…hmm that bargaining session was a little easier than we had anticipated! However about 5 minutes later he came over and said that he had made a mistake and he best he could do was 3600rupees. We told him that he had already agreed to 3500rupees and that we would give the extra hundred each to the driver as a tip, to which he replied ‘what about my holiday money?’...hmm.
The following morning we all stumbled out of bed just before 5am, ran through the pouring rain and jumped in the jeep with our driver Kaloo. We reached the park just as the sun was coming up and the rain was slowing to a light drizzle - much more favourable conditions for animal spotting that the torrential downpour we had left in Tissa. After buying our tickets we picked up our tracker, drove past two wild elephants hiding behind some trees and set off in search of leopards.
About an hour in things were looking a little grim with only the two obscured elephants and a couple of birds, however that all changed when our driver received a phone call from his friend. We heard the word ‘leopard’ mentioned as Kaloo stood on the accelerator and rushed off towards some big rocks.
Luckily for us, and the other 15 or so jeeps that had also got the call, there was a very sleepy leopard on top of some big rocks that was showing no intention of moving for quite some time. The initial tracker/driver must have pretty incredible eyesight as to the ordinary passerby it would have
just looked like a lumpy rock. We waited in the queue of jeeps until they had all had their turn of watching the leopard being lazy before we made it to the prime viewing position where it was clear that the lump on top of the rock had a tail and an amazing spotty coat. After watching the leopard for quite some time we set off to search for more wildlife.
Yala National Park is home to a hoard of wildlife including water buffalo, wild boar, monkeys (unfortunately), crocodiles, birds and about 150 elephants. By the end of the 7hours we had been lucky enough to spot all of these creatures, including two male elephants who were not at all fussed by our jeep lurking about 10m from them. It was wonderful to see elephants in the wild and particularly nice considering our other encounter with elephants in Sri Lanka was the chained ones near the Sacred Tooth Temple in Kandy. These elephants looked really content and well fed; although I think they probably would have been happier in my backyard at home (Scott refused to smuggle them out for me, some nonsense about them not fitting in my
bag...).
On Boxing Day 2004 Yala National Park was hit by the same tsunami which wreaked havoc across Indonesia and Thailand. During our 7hour drive around the park we stopped off at the memorial which has been built beside a bungalow that was completely wiped out by the wave. Quite a number of locals and tourists were killed in Yala on the day, including a large number who were waiting to head out on safari from a hotel which was deep inside the park. Kaloo was working in the park on that day and was supposed to be at that hotel when the wave hit, however his customers delayed him entering the park as they were late having breakfast. Unfortunately his brother was not so lucky and was killed along with everyone else who was in the hotel.
During our jeep ride we ventured down one track which didn’t seem very popular. As we rounded a corner we saw why; the road was split in two down the middle with the right hand side being about half a meter higher than the left. Our tracker tried to persuade Kaloo to reverse and head out the way we had
come in but Kaloo jumped out of the jeep, measured the drop against his body, decided it was OK, jumped back in the jeep and pushed on. This decision turned out to be one of the highlights of the safari; the jeep was on a very sharp angle and we all had to hold on to whatever we could to stop us falling out of the jeep! The rest of the drive back to the main track was slightly less challenging, but still lots of fun, including one moment where we slid sideways across a particularly muddy part.
At one point in time, as we were watching a family of wild boar, Sarah decided she wanted to have wild boar for lunch. Kaloo said that he knew a restaurant which made an awesome wild boar curry and we invited him along to have lunch with us after the safari finished. Scott said the boar tasted like meat - a very Scott description of something. During the lunch Kaloo asked us how much we had paid for the trip. He scoffed when we told him how much the hotel owner said that the jeep cost and confirmed that it should
have been 4500rupees maximum...oh well, we still had a wonderful safari trip and Kaloo was a fantastic driver. In fact, Kaloo ended up spotting every single one of the animals while the tracker snoozed and panicked about four-wheel driving!
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manoj Sanjeewa
non-member comment
nissanka_manoj@yahoo.com
wowww,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,]\ is nice Yala tour Photos.