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Published: June 13th 2017
HE SAID... Today we were travelling south-east from Bandarawela to
Yala National Park.
We woke late, and after slowly gathering ourselves together, we headed to the hotel’s open air balcony for breakfast. I was feeling a little under the weather from way too much arrack the night before, but it wasn’t enough to stop me enjoying a plate of
hoppers (thin crispy rice flour and coconut crepes cooked in a mini-wok),
pol sambol (shredded coconut with onions, chilli and lime), chickpeas and boiled eggs. With a focus on rehydration, I refreshed myself with quite a few watermelon juices and cups of tea.
We left our hotel in the hills of Bandarawela after breakfast (around 9am) and began our journey out of the Hill Country and towards the southern coastline. We snaked our way through the majestic Ella Gap, and while the views from our minibus were breathtaking, I was slightly worried when we pulled into a roadside temple and Hemantha (our bus assistant) jumped out and made an offering for a safe journey. The ever-present signs warning of dangerous driving conditions and steep cliffs didn’t help! However, it was a fantastic experience. After about an hour on the road
we stopped at Rawana Falls, and the waterfall and surrounding scenery was spectacular. We picked up a couple of bracelets from a roadside vendor, which is one of those idiosyncratic travel customs we’ve adopted over the years.
The steep winding road eventually flattened as we descended from the Hill Country to the dry plains below, passing through Wellawaya (Uva Province) on our journey to Tissamaharama in the Southern Province. We arrived at our hotel (Oak Ray Lake Resort) at midday, and we were impressed with its location on the banks of Tissa Wewa, an artificial lake about 1.5 kilometres from the town centre.
Our room (which had a fantastic view of the lake) wasn’t ready, so we ordered lunch from the hotel kitchen. I opted for a club sandwich with chips and a lime soda, and it was ordinary (to say the least). I should have gone for the Indian
aloo gobi (potato and cauliflower curry)! However, it satiated my hunger, and we had a big afternoon ahead. With lunch behind us, we climbed into our minibus and headed to Yala National Park for a safari. We arrived at the gates of the park, transferred into an open
jeep and set off into the arid coastal plains of this enormous nature reserve in Sri Lanka’s south-east. As we bumped and lurched our way around the park’s dusty tracks, we saw elephants, water buffalo, pelicans, storks, kingfishers, blue-tailed green bee-eaters, wild boar, sambar deer, spotted deer, peacocks, peahens, black faced grey langurs, crocodiles, monitor lizards and a mongoose.
However, the absolute highlight of the safari was seeing a leopard resting up a tree. The lowlight of the experience was the plethora of jeeps carrying countless tourists (us included), which caused the jeep drivers and their passengers to become very selfish in the way they approached the experience. Human nature never changes when crowds are involved.
I was grateful when we were offered a chance to disembark the jeep on a section of coastline within the national park, although only metres from where elephants were grazing and crocodiles were sun bathing. The national park was impacted by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, and 47 lives were lost at this particular spot. The remnants of a bungalow remain as a silent, harrowing reminder of the devastation caused by the tsunami, and a monument (possibly resembling the towering wave that
struck the beach) has been erected at the site in remembrance of those who died and those who were reported missing.
What struck me the most about this memorial at Patanangala Beach was the descriptive text etched on a stone panel beside the monument:
In memory of the forty seven lives taken by the tsunami. As an act of past revenge, at 9:20am on the 26th December 2004, tsunami waves struck the Yala National Park, taking the lives of fifteen Japanese and German visitors. Twenty nine local visitors and two foreigners and one local reported missing.
I couldn’t reconcile the tsunami being described as
an act of past revenge. Revenge for what??? I tried to convince myself that something had been lost in translation. Tamil and Sinhala script were included with the English text, so it was possible that the original meaning had been misread during the translation process. I hope this was the case, because I struggle when people use human traits such as vengeance to causally explain natural disasters, especially when they advocate a god as the vengeful perpetrator!
Despite the swarms of tourists battling for a majestic photo of themselves on the beach, we
lingered for a while in the natural tranquillity of Patanangala Beach before clambering back into the jeep and continuing our Yala safari. On our way out of the park, we came across a congested track full of jeeps where we had previously seen the leopard. It was still in the area, but we were too far back in the traffic jam to see it again. As a tourist in a jeep on safari in a park, I was just as keen to see a leopard as the next person, but the human congestion at this particular point in the park was disappointing. Large crowds often amplify selflessness in some and selfishness in others, and the impatient desire to photograph the poor leopard revealed the mercenary among us, and there were many. As for my part in the touristic scrum, I felt I’d overstayed my welcome.
We lurched along Yala’s dusty, bumpy tracks on what seemed to be a hasty retreat, and I sensed the park’s gates may be closing at a specific time. Whatever the reason, we were getting out of the park fast. We clambered out of the jeep, climbed into our minibus and drove back to Tissamaharama
with an incredible red sunset guiding our way. We were covered in dust from the safari experience, so we quickly showered before heading downstairs to the hotel’s open air restaurant for pre-dinner drinks.
Our buffet dinner was laid out at 7:30pm, and we feasted on rice and naan with barbequed lake fish, barbequed chicken, barbequed sausages,
dahl (lentil curry), black pork curry, cabbage curry, stir-fried garlic
kangkung (water spinach), cucumber curry,
brinjal moju (fried eggplant pickle with red onions),
pol sambol and boiled egg salad. I opted for banana fritters,
watalappan (spiced coconut egg custard) and curd with treacle for dessert.
While the buffet dinner wasn’t outstanding, it was nice enough, and the hotel was comfortable. We relaxed in the balmy night air beside the lake for a while before heading up to our room at 10pm. It had been a long day, and we were exhausted.
The opening pages of Sonali Deraniyagala’s harrowing memoir (titled
Wave) had been resonant in my mind throughout the day, especially during our time at Patanangala Beach. The author and her family were holidaying in Yala National Park when the tsunami hit, and she lost her parents, husband and two sons
to the heartless wave. Approximately 250 people (tourists and locals alike) were lost in Yala, and I couldn’t help but imagine the fear they must have experienced as the wave inundated the park. They were in a beautiful place, but by sheer ill luck, they were there at the wrong time.
SHE SAID... We had enjoyed the cool air and mountain views in the hill country of Bandarawela, but it was now time to get back to sea level and hopefully a bit of nice sun. We were off to
Yala National Park, near the town of Tissamaharama (called Tissa).
After a night of excesses and absurdities we woke a bit bleary eyed at 7am, and had to rush (Andrew ‘rushed’ in slow motion) to get our packing done. Those of us who’d had a big night were a bit quiet at breakfast. However, I still managed to have a biggish breakfast by having a small serve of everything –
hoppers (thin crispy rice flour and coconut crepes cooked in a mini-wok),
pol sambol (shredded coconut with onions, chilli and lime), chicken and salad rolls, tuna sandwiches, fruit, fresh watermelon juice and tea. When we gave
feedback that the breakfast was good, we were told the owner of the hotel used to be a baker and enjoyed cooking breakfast. Given the high quality of the homemade rolls and other breakfast items were in stark contrast to the distinct lack of quality in the hotel and customer side of things, we all agreed that he should have kept his original business – it’s clearly where his passion lies.
After saying a sad goodbye to Bullet the dog, we piled into our minibus. First we drove through the unattractive unplanned sprawl of Bandarawela and then further into the rural hills. We eventually passed the hippie town of Ella and started driving downhill into gorgeous Ella Gap, which is a split in the mountains where the land plummets about 1000m into the dry plains in the south. The road was steep, windy, and scary in places, but the landscape was simply stunning.
We stopped at a bridge with dozens of other tourists to look at the 90m Rawana Falls. A few fruit stalls and others selling tourist stuff lined the road, so Andrew and I bought our first Sri Lankan bracelets here. We always buy a bracelet
or two from each country we travel to, and wear it for the duration of the trip. The waterfall was very beautiful, but I was somewhat distracted by the troupes of toque macaque monkeys eyeing off the food and water bottles of preoccupied tourists, and the fact that we were essentially standing on the smallest bit of walkway on a highway on which trucks were hurtling past at breakneck speed.
After the brief stop, we continued our descent to the flatlands. Rural Sri Lanka isn’t as isolated as the image that’s conjured up by the term ‘rural’. The roadside was constantly populated with small shops, houses with fruit tree gardens, cattle grazing in patches of grass and rice fields stretching to the horizon. There was no escaping the fact that this is a highly populous country.
We arrived at the Oak Ray Lake Resort in the early afternoon and I immediately liked the open tropical style of the hotel, set on the banks of the beautiful Tissa Tank. The lake, locally called a
wewa (tank), was a large man-made reservoir. The ancient royal civilisations were ingenious in their engineering and construction of reservoirs, which harvested seasonal rainfall and
natural streams to enable year round agricultural practices. We had already seen these ancient reservoirs in Sigiriya and at Kaudulla National Park, where the elephants had gathered around in large numbers – an unintended but brilliant result for the wildlife who have few natural sources of water in the dry season.
Our rooms weren’t ready, so we sat down in the beautiful open air dining room to have a quick lunch of sandwiches. My ‘fried egg sandwich’ turned out to be a bland omelette on dry unbuttered toast, and Andrew’s club sandwich was no better. However, the hot chips and cold drinks very much hit the spot. The curries that came out looked good, and we kicked ourselves for not ordering a rice and curry meal – lesson learnt!
We had an hour’s break to relax in our room before we left for our afternoon safari in Yala National Park. All the rooms in the hotel were in a double storey layout facing the pool, and we loved our newly built room on the top floor that had a good view of the lake. The beautiful lake began right where the hotel pool ended, and had a lot
of happy birdlife on it. It was also nice to be in a hotel with well trained staff and a friendly manager.
We drove towards the town of Tissa and around the far side of the Tissa Tank. I enjoyed watching local fishermen wading through the colourful water lilies to get to their boats. We then headed towards the famous Yala NP which has a large protected area of nearly 130,000 hectares. Yala used to be a hunting ground for the British elite, but was thankfully given national park status in 1938. Positioned in the bottom south-east of the country, the park is edged by the Indian Ocean, and as a result, was very much affected by the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004.
As we approached the park gates we saw a lone male elephant grazing by the side of a small waterhole near the road. Our group leader Thila wasn’t sure how many elephants we'd see in the park (he’d done a few safaris in Yala NP where they hadn’t seen any elephants at all), so we stopped and watched this lone ranger, just in case. One of our group members had gained some notoriety among the
rest of us for asking inane questions – often because she was too busy chatting when the information had been shared, and also because she had an endless thirst for pointless information. This person got very agitated that the elephant was out of the boundaries of the park, and asked Thila why the elephant wasn’t confined in the park. Before Thila could react, other group members quickly chipped in with hilarious suggestions like ‘he must’ve applied for a day pass’; ‘he climbed the gate’; and ‘he is a very naughty boy’. I love a group with a sense of humour. 😊
Just before we entered the park, we transferred from our minibus into two waiting open jeeps and drove through the park gates. We drove for a bit on sealed roads and then turned into a safari track. Prior to leaving the hotel for our safari, Thila had strongly suggested that we bring a scarf or face covering as it was going to be a very dusty drive, and he was right. Whenever we drove in the wake of other jeeps, thick clouds of red dust washed over us, and the dust never really dissipated or settled – it
annoyingly redistributed itself over and over again (over us!).
The geography of the park kept changing as we made our way through it – we drove through light forests, thorny scrubland, open grassland and coastal lagoons. We started spotting flocks of birds almost immediately – water birds like pelicans, large painted storks, smaller white storks and peacocks with peahens. I shouldn’t have been surprised at the density of birdlife, because our briefing had mentioned there were over 200+ bird species. However, given it was a huge park and only two of the five blocks of the park are open to the public, I hadn’t expected to see so many birds out on the jeep tracks. Waterholes had also attracted small herds of water buffalo, who were sitting in the water or lying in shallow pools of mud to cool off. They seemed so relaxed in the warm afternoon sun that our jeep had to go off-track to avoid a baby buffalo who was lying in the muddy pot holes on the track. It was a very cute and adorable sight.
Next we came across a troupe of black faced grey langur monkeys on the side of the track
– they appeared to be sunning themselves and didn't seem worried by us at all either. The few herds of spotted deer weren’t so bold as to come close to the track though, but even they were braver than the occasional very shy sambar deer who’d dart into the scrub when we approached. We eventually sighted elephants! A partially hidden male elephant was busy munching on leaves from tall trees, and a bit further along, a mother elephant and her very young calf were grazing in marshy grass near the edge of the forest. It was a beautiful and exciting sight. However, this would have been far more exciting if we hadn't just seen over 70 elephants during our Kaudulla National Park Safari a few days previously.
Then the highlight of our safari occurred – a leopard sighting! We’d just turned a corner and saw a flurry of jeep activity in front of us, and our driver raced to the spot. The was an open field in front of us and the leopard was lounging in a tree on the edge of the forest, about 500m from us. The leopard was initially facing away from us, but eventually stood
up and changed branches – and now the bright-eyed big cat was staring directly at the line of jeeps we were in. It was the most beautiful sight watching this exquisite animal draped so elegantly on a branch, regarding the tourist spectacle with such nonchalance. It was heavily backlit, so I was surprised that we still managed to get a few clear-ish photos of it. However we’d been there less than ten minutes when something made it uncomfortable – it sniffed the air with an open mouth, swished its tail and slinked off the tree and melted into the shrubbery. I was surprised at how very big and stocky it was, as I had always thought of leopards as slightly built. Yala NP has the biggest population of Sri Lankan leopards, which is a subspecies endemic to the island (that may explain the larger size). I was so excited at having seen my first ever wild leopard! 😊
We drove around looking for more leopards, ending up at exposed rocks by the beach which apparently the leopards love to sun themselves on. Even though the sea on the edge of the park looked so serenely beautiful, I couldn’t help
but think of the tsunami that hit here in 2004 and killed so many people, and obviously animals too (although there are theories that the animals sensed the impending danger and fled to higher ground). Before this trip, Andrew and I read
Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala, a traumatic biographical account of how the author lost five members of her immediate family in the tsunami while they visited Yala NP. It was a very difficult narrative to read, but I’m so glad I persevered through it… I highly recommend the book.
We had a short toilet stop and break near the beach. After a cursory look at the very lovely beach, I hurried off to the toilet block and only later realised that this beach was one of the spots where the tsunami had cruelly claimed many lives. Luckily Andrew was more on the ball than I was, and managed to find the monument erected for the victims along the beach. When I later asked Thila why he hadn’t mentioned the monument to us, he made one of his typically nonsensical replies – ‘Yes very sad, many people died, especially in the fishing boats’. Hmmm. Not quite what I asked.
We kept driving around for a little while longer and saw a few rock-still crocodiles sunning themselves on the banks of waterholes with their mouths menacingly open, more water buffalo lying in little mud baths, beautiful birds like kingfishers and green bee-eaters, cautious monitor lizards, one shy wild boar, and a confused looking black mongoose who seemed a bit stunned at the jeeps on the road. Towards the end of our drive we saw another family of elephants in the distance across a small waterhole, so we stayed for a while and watched the baby elephants in the group interact playfully. I don’t think I will ever tire of watching wild baby elephants at play. I was slightly disappointed that we didn’t see any sloth bears, but it was the wrong season to spot them anyway.
When we skirted the waterhole with all the crocodiles in it, I happened to look over to my right and saw the roof of the toilet block I had just used…only a couple of hundred metres from all those lovely hungry-looking reptiles! If there was any sort of croc-proof fencing around the toilet area, I certainly didn’t see it! 😱
As
beautiful as the Yala NP was, and as much as I loved our safari drive through it, it was very disappointing to hear that they don’t have a policy of limiting jeep numbers per day. We certainly witnessed the downside of this – first at the sighting of the leopard, and later as we exited the park. A rumoured sighting of a leopard caused a frenzy on the narrow road and we observed some very bad and rude behaviour from some jeep drivers. They thought nothing of driving on the wrong side of the track to ‘jump the queue’, and managed to cause a grid lock with oncoming jeeps in the process. We were stuck in ‘traffic’ for about 15 minutes in uncomfortable heat and red dust clouds, and we certainly weren’t happy about it!
When we eventually started moving it got even dustier, as all the jeeps were back to back and racing to get out of the park before the gates closed at 6pm. A few minutes after we said goodbye to our jeep drivers and got back in our minibus, Anil our driver had to brake quiet suddenly as the jeep in front had stopped to
let a star tortoise cross the road. The beautiful distinct star pattern on its shell was very evident, even from a distance. I guess it was taking too long to cross, as the driver eventually got out and carried the tortoise into the bushes on the other side. As much as I don’t like seeing wild life handled by humans, I can see why he did it.
Even though we were exhausted and uncomfortably shrouded in fine dust, we couldn’t help but reflect on the fabulous day we’d had. We drove to the hotel in the company of a glowing red sunset that comically matched our red dust covered selves.
Back at the hotel, we quickly showered and walked downstairs to a buffet dinner and bbq. It was a lavish spread of food, and as usual, I tried to sample as much as I could. There was yellow rice, naan, black pork curry, cucumber curry, cabbage curry, stir-fried garlic
kangkung (water spinach),
brinjal moju (fried eggplant pickle with red onions),
dahl (lentil curry), steamed vegetables, boiled egg salad,
pol sambol and pappadums, along with chicken and lake fish from the bbq. It was a lovely enough meal, but
none of the dishes were amazing. I was pleased that there were a couple of dishes that were new to me – cucumber curry (which was light and refreshing) and black pork curry (I quite liked the flavour, but the un-rendered pork fat made it a bit gross). For dessert we had curd and treacle, banana fritters, bread and butter pudding,
watalappan (spiced coconut egg custard) and creme caramel. Andrew had pre-warned me that the curd was quite sour, so I skipped it and tried everything else.
Earlier in the day while chatting with the friendly manager about Sri Lankan food, I had mentioned
watalappan… so I shouldn’t have been surprised when he came over to me at dinner and said he’d asked the chef to specifically make
watalappan for the buffet. I felt bad that the chef had been given more work on my account, especially as the
watalappan was the least favourite of the desserts I tried…
We’d had a long tiring day, so we had no choice but to have a relatively early night. We went to bed very happy at having experienced a great travel day and having seen more wild elephants, and a leopard!
Next we travel south-west to Mirissa for some beach bliss.
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Shelley and Scott
Michele Hutchinson and Scott Maberley
Incredible photo of the Leopard and the green bee eater
Yet to see a big cat in the wild so we are very jealous. Such a shame that so many wildlife safari's turn into a human scrum to get a photo, you sort of wonder if the animals look back and laugh. A really beautiful corner of the world and sad to think the tsunami had such a devastating affect.