Sri Lanka 4. Yala. An early start but worth it.

Tropical Tip No. 72.  an unused shower cap, often provided by the hotel, makes an excellent cover for a cut watermelon.

 

sunrise in Yala

To get to the Yala National Park for opening time at 6.00am we left the hotel in the dark at 5.00am by open sided jeep.  At 141 sq km Yala is a little over twice the size of Bundala and while it has areas of water is mainly tropical forest with open grasslands.  We entered the park before dawn and the sounds of a tropical wilderness were already beginning to be heard.  Birds sit silhouetted in trees with the most noticeable being peacocks who roost collectively with perhaps ten or more in a single tree, so too do Bee-eaters.  The air is cool, the light and mist is low, anticipation is high and the sun rises quickly, not at an angle as we’re used to but straight up like a rocket.   Almost the first wildlife we see are more elephants which are close to us among shrubs and small trees, not far away across a plains grassland dotted with Thorn Trees like East Africa.  One big problem is that if there are any elephants near a road, lots of vehicles stop and some drivers are completely oblivious to the fact that they’re blocking off where the animals want to go.  We saw young elephants being blocked off by disrespectful jeep drivers.

 

enjoying cool supporting water
and breathing through it's trunk

a young one passes on the left

a family troop

Malabar Pied Hornbill

There are lots of birds gathered on the open pools of water and those flitting about in the bush are often quite difficult to spot but Niroshan is a good spotter and identifier.   Listing all the birds we saw would only interest the birders so I’ll only mention a few although I can confirm that the commonest two birds in Sri Lanka are the Lesser-spotted Glimpse and the Speedy Gone Bird.

 

Pheasant-tailed Jacana, just look at that gold neck 

Crested Hawk-eagle

Those of you fortunate enough to have been on an East African Safari will know that vehicles drive wherever they can, tearing across the grass in all directions and surrounding any lions or other large mammals unlucky enough to be spotted.   One big plus for Sri Lanka concerning the wildlife is that vehicles must stay on the tracks, passengers are not allowed out of the vehicles with the severe penalty for infringement being that the driver loses his licence to enter the park.  All vehicles have to leave the park or congregate in a few allowable places for two hours over lunch to allow a bit of quiet time for the animals and the parks are also locked shut at night. 

This is a Ruddy Mongoose

and this looks like a Water Buffalo having a lot of fun

Our lunch at the edge of the park wasn’t a cordon bleu affair because we settle for
some fruit and a handful of nuts but the location was alongside the most magnificent empty curved sandy beach with the bleu being the ocean crashing against it.  Looking due south from here the first land is Antarctica. 

 

After lunch a call came through to our driver that a leopard had been spotted and we drove off to find a jam of about fifteen to twenty jeeps looking at a leopard on a rock fifty or so yards away.  It watched us and then I fancy rather distainfully (although I do try to steer clear of anthropomorphism) stood up and walked out of sight.  Thirty minutes or so later we stopped next to another stationery jeep to watch a leopard two or three hundred yards away lying on a horizontal branch in a tree.  This one couldn’t have been disturbed by us at that distance and it stood up after a few minutes, swung around and climbed backwards down the trunk to the ground.  Just like a domestic cat and no Fire Service crew had to be called to help it down.

 

a very busy pool with Painted Storks, Spoonbills and Great White Egrets

there are lots of crocodiles

Being on an all-day safari meant that we were able to get a long way into the park and avoid all the half day tours and at about 4.30 we rounded a bend and there he was, a stunningly beautiful large male leopard just languidly strolling along the track away from us.  Apart from the sort of glance you’d give a fly on a window he paid us no attention whatsoever.  He peed in a few places, or ‘marked his territory’ as Sir David A would whisper it, rolled over just like a house cat but one you’d have to be brave to order off the sofa and carried on his elegantly fluid amble.  Sashaying I’d call it.   I got a bit carried away with the old camera but from my first photo to last was a fraction under twelve minutes and for most of that time our open sided jeep crept alongside him at a leopard’s pace within ten feet or so.  A breath-taking and heart thumping experience.   Awesome in the proper sense.

 

male leopard - more pictures below

To us on the ground these nature reserves are all different and we see a variety of creatures but to write about all of them and make it interesting and different I consider beyond my skills.  I’m also aware that there will be readers of this blog who are only interested in animals if they’re nestled on a plate with a selection of vegetables.  So I won’t be writing a piece about every reserve although I might mention them.  Yala should provide a good feel for what we’re lucky enough to be enjoying.

 

However, as a counterpoint to all the fun we’re having I do want to say something about the Sri Lankan economy which is in a sorry state.  Tourism is one of the biggest contributors to the economy here and for reasons which you’ll all be aware of, tourism has been at virtually zero for two years.  In addition to that, a year before Covid there were some ISIS terrorist bombings in Colombo and that hit tourism badly too.  Niroshan, a highly trained guide told us that we were his first tour for two years.  Once Covid arrived he was out of work for a year and then managed to get a job as a driver.  Some of the hotels we’ve stayed in are still virtually empty with more staff than guests to be seen.   A couple of the larger ones with at a guess fifty to a hundred rooms have had three or four guests staying.  The foreign currency which the tourism brings buys things like oil and gas which are in short supply and while we were driving Niroshan said that his wife had told him she was out of gas and couldn’t find any.  That meant no cooking.  She did manage to get some gas a couple of days later.  We’re told that vegetables have doubled (some tripled) in price in the last two years.  Things are desperate. 

 

 

Covering 22 Jan 2022