Anyway - My husband and a friend of ours were the only people who were going on this trip. Since that day was a working day my husband decided to talk half a day off from work and start off as early as possible. He picked up our friend from her home and came home, where we had lunch and then left Colombo around 1.45 p.m. We were staying at the Society bungalow that night - we reached there around 5.30 p.m.
When we reached the bungalow only Roshan the assistant bungalow keeper was there. We lazed around the bungalow and watched the sunset and then decided to have an early dinner and go to sleep.
The next day we were to stay at one of the bungalows inside Udawalawe National Park. The name of the bungalow is Seenuggala - this bungalow is located by the side of a water body and you get plenty of animal life coming to this water hole.
Having had breakfast, we then partly packed our bags. We then left to the closest town as we wanted to buy fresh fish for our lunch. We were lucky - we did get the fish. We returned to the bungalow, packed the remaining stuff and left the bungalow around 10.30 a.m. It seemed to be rather overcast that day. Went to the park entrance got the preliminaries sorted out and left with tracker Siripala to our bungalow. We reached Seenuggala at about 11.30 a.m.
When we reached the bungalow we were greeted by Moonesinghe, the bungalow keeper, he was busy cleaning the hurricane lanterns. We were then told that lightening had struck the solar panel system and would have to make do with hurricane lanterns. That was fine by us because when we go camping that is all we use.
Since Moonesinghe was very busy cleaning the lamps could not tell him what we wanted for lunch, so we decided to make our beds and take a little nap until then. Finally he finished his cleaning and I told him what to cook. We had lunch and told Moonesinghe to serve tea at about 3.00 p.m. so that we could leave for the evening round by 3.30 p.m. We were quite unlucky - it decided to rain. That meant we were bungalow bound.
We were suddenly alerted by deer calling at the other side of the water hole. We thought sure thing a leopard had come to the water hole. Then all of a sudden there was a call of a deer as though he was breathing his last. We observed with our binoculars and there on the ground was a deer - he had a python wrapped around him. This must have been a pretty big python cos the deer too was a full grown adult. We observed this till the light faded away and we could see no more. We were quite thrilled that we could observe this incident, but felt quite sorry for the deer of course. We then had our customary drink, had dinner and went to bed.
The next morning we woke up at about 6.00 a.m. It was drizzling. However, we decided to go on a morning round. We were charged by a lone elephant - nothing serious though. We also saw quite a few birds. We than decided to go back to the bungalow for breakfast. Had breakfast, told him what to prepare for lunch and decided to take a nap till lunch. Had lunch. We went on our evening round at 3.30 p.m. This time there were plenty of elephants. It rained continuously that evening. We headed for the bungalow. Had our drinks, had dinner and went to sleep.
Woke up to the alarm at 6.00 a.m. the following day. Today we were going to be having brunch as we were leaving that day. Having told him what to prepare we set out. We did some birding and then came back to the bungalow around 10.00 a.m. Had our brunch, packed and left the bungalow around 10.45 a.m. Came to Colombo in the evening.
