A trip to Weheragolla bungalow, Udawalawe National Park

Taking Monday the 27th of August off from work would make the 25th to 28th of August a long weekend. Therefore it was decided that a couple of friends would do a trip to the Udawalawe National Park and stay inside the park at the Weheragolla bungalow.

We had a prior engagement on Saturday the 25th therefore we were unable to join the rest of the crowd that day. We were only able to go on Sunday. Having been up till late saturday evening we only got up around 5.30 a.m. on Sunday. Hurriedly packed the vehicle and we were on our way to Udawalawe leaving home at 6.30 a.m.

Since we were staying inside the park we needed a tracker to get to the bungalow. We had told our friends to therefore come to the park entrance by 11.00 a.m. anticipating that we would leave Colombo much later than 6.30 a.m. We arrived at the park entrance however by 9.45 a.m. and decided we would wait there till 11.00 a.m. till our friends came to pick us up. They came around 11.30 a.m. and we were very glad to see them as we were anxious to get to the bungalow and have a good rest.

We reached the bungalow finally after about an hours drive. Unpacked and decided to have a river bath which flows just past the bungalow. We then had a late lunch and rested awhile. We fell asleep and woke up around 5.30 p.m. only to discover that we had not been woken up in order to go on the evening round. We were a bit annoyed at that but our good friends thought that we needed to sleep since we had broken rest the previous night. The other crowd came back after their evening round. They did not have that much of luck, probably just a few elephants. My husband then decided it would be a great idea to have another river bath. We sat around and chatted about this, that and the other. We had dinner and then decided to sit out and enjoy the night sounds. We heard alarm calls of deer and sambhur which could only mean one thing and that was that leopard was around. We were hoping that it would make an appearance but we were not fortunate enought. We also heard the call of the forest eagle owl but that was quite some distance from the bungalow. Elephant too decided to trumphet. Non of these animals were unfortunately visible to us. We then decided it was time to call it a day and went to sleep.