Holiday in Sri Lanka (4): Yala
We all woke tired today (Saturday) because of a broken night’s sleep, mainly because at 4.30 am there were very loud broadcasts of religious chanting from local Hindu temples followed by miscellaneous but similarly disruptive animal noises. However, we paid our bills to a delightful gentleman who seemed to have walked straight off the set of “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”: charming, unflappable, excellent English, and ears like those of an elephant.
We left Galle in our minibus at 8.30 am. Heading east, we returned to the highway until we reached Matara and then we hugged the coast again with more views of the Indian Ocean and one small town after another as we overtook multiple three-wheeled tuks-tuks and avoided water buffalo wandering along the road.
Our only stops were to drink from a king coconut purchased from a road-side stall and to have a quick (and very late) comfort break. It was 12.45 pm, after more than four hours on the road, when we reached the Jetwing Hotel located just outside Yala National Park. The hotel replaced one destroyed in the 2004 tsunami and only opened in 2014.
After a quick lunch, we went out on safari in Yala National Park in a jeep carrying just us three, Rashmika and our driver/guide. We were out almost four hours bumping along the parched and rough red earth tracks. The whole park covers an area of 141 sq km (54 sq miles). It is divided into five blocks of which only Blocks I and II are open to visitors and we visited Block I known as Ruhuna which is the most accessible (it adjoins the coast) and contains the leopard population (we never saw a single leopard).
Now I have been to three national parks before (in South Africa and Botswana) and I know that whether you see given animals depends on the time of the day, the time of year, the skill of the guide, and sheer luck. I guess that, in all the circumstances, we did quite well today.
We observed several elephants, deer (spotted and samba), water buffalo, wild boar, crocodile, jungle fowl, the grey langer monkey, a monitor lizard, and even a cobra snake slithering across the track. There was also a lot of bird life around and our observations included storks (painted, adjutant and open bill), peacocks, egret, cormorant, green bee eater, Indian pond heron, hornbill, spoonbill, serpent eagle, and lots of pelicans. Although we saw no leopards (apparently they were around yesterday), we found half a deer which had been killed by a leopard and stored in a tree for later collection.
Again we had dinner in the hotel, but this time it was not part of the package and there were many other guests, I concluded my meal with a traditional Sri Lankan pudding called watalappan which is a coconut custard pudding made of coconut milk, jaggery, cashew nuts, eggs and various spices (delicious).