A Trip to Yala in December 2nd - 4th

We, my husband and I and four other friends of ours, left Colombo around 3.45 am. on the 2nd of December. We were on our way to Yala. However, we first thought we would go to the Bundala National Park and we reached there about 7.30 a.m. There we had breakfast of sandwiches and coffee. Nothing much to see in Bundala - the day was pretty overcast.

We left Bundala around 11.30 a.m. and proceeded toward Yala - we were staying at "Forest Lodge" - this is outside the national park. We reached there around 2.00 p.m. Asked the caretaker to prepare lunch. We had our lunch and then decided we should go on the evening round in the park. We saw only a lonely elephant that evening much to our disappointment. Came back to the bungalow and chilled out. Had dinner and retired for the night.

The next day we woke up and to our disappointment it was pelting with rain. We decided to go back to sleep. Anyway we woke up and had our late breakfast and decided we should do a mid morning round in the park. There was a constant drizzle. However, we managed to spot a leopard but he too made a hasty retreat into the jungle. We also managed to spot a bear and cub and while we were there watching the bear, a jeep driver told us that there was a tusker spotted at the other end of the park so we decided to leave the bear and pursue that. We did manage to locate him - took a few photographs of him and then since it was getting dark we decided to call it a day. We came back to the bungalow around 6.30 p.m. and we immediately asked our bungalow keeper to have dinner ready as we were now famished as we had not had had any lunch. We had dinner, lazed around a bit and then went to sleep hoping that the next day would be a brighter day.

The next day we woke up and to our surprise it was a brilliant day, the sun was shining, the birds were singing. Immediately we had our tea and left hoping that we would have better luck. As we proceeded our tracker immediately asked my husband to stop the vehicle as he thought he had spotted a leopard on a tree - sure enough there was a leopard - but he got down and walked into the jungle - not very obliging!!! He appeared to be a really large male leopard. We drove around quite a bit in the park but no luck - we decided to head back as were coming back home that day.

Headed back to the bungalow, had lunch, packed our bags and came back home. We reached home around 6.30 p.m. with my husband getting the flu.

"The bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century."- Philip Shabecoff

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