Safariing Sri Lanka

I’ve wanted to write this blog post for a while, but between getting Lasik and starting the new school year  I haven’t had time. Finally, I have some now.

Sri Lanka is known to have some of the best safari’s outside of Africa.  For a country slightly larger than West Virginia it contains the highest density of wild elephants, 10% of the global Asian elephant population.  It also has 26 national parks,  in comparison,  England four times the size has only 15.  Prior to leaving for Sri Lanka, my goal was to do two Safaris.

Wilpattu National Park

Wilpattu national park is the oldest and largest in the country, it’s also one of the least visited. It’s known as much for its nature as it is for its animals. Unlike other parks, it has a verity of environments: forests, dry zone, open grassland, and natural lakes. From what I read you can be in the park and rarely come across other jeeps. This is unlike Yala, Sri Lanka’s most famous for spotting leopards (one of the best places in the world for this), where there are hoards of jeeps jostling to be the closest.

When I got to Anuradhapura, the city closest to Wilpattu, I didn’t think it was going to happen. Alone it would have been too expensive and the first night nobody out of the few people in the hostel wanted to go. But, on my second day, five new guys came and three of them wanted to go. We signed up for the full day 12-hour safari.  We left at 5 in the morning and didn’t get back until 6:30.  The safari started off great, our eyes scanned every direction looking to see something, with every animal, we saw our excitement grew. Until three hours into the safari, I started getting sick, really sick. Driving through the national park was like being on a boat in extremely choppy waters, continuous bumps, up and down side to side. I felt so bad I couldn’t eat lunch and after that, we still had 6 more hours. As long as we saw animals I was fine, we’d stop, but the time in between searching for them went slowly second by second, my teeth clenched holding on to the railing to prevent me from shaking more. When we go back I couldn’t have dinner.  I was exhausted and went to bed at 7:45.

Animals seem: 24 safari chicken (later learned to be a junglefowl), a lot of peacocks(1 in tree, 1 showing feathers ), 1 owl, 18 water buffalo, 12 iguana, 1 turkey, a lot of  deer, 2 zamba deer, 2 Indian jackals, 1 wolf, 5 wild bird, a bunch of monkeys, 3 crocodiles, 2 white eagles, 1 elephant, 1 mongoose, 1 squirrel , 1 hawk, 1 rabbit, 1 sloth bear.

Udawalawe National Park

Udawalawe is located in the southern region of the country and is known for its elephants, around 2,500-3,000 are supposed to live in the park.  Seeing only 1 very far away at Wilpattu, an elephant Safari was something I definitely wanted to experience. Since I was arriving to the area in the morning, I wanted to do an afternoon Safari so I could leave the next day and have more time at the beach.  Nobody was around to share the safari with, so I did it by myself.

The first time seeing the elephants up close was magical, there were three of them just hanging out, with a couple of other jeeps around them. I could have stayed there, really I didn’t feel any need to move, but we had only just begun the safari.  Throughout it, I saw a lot of elephants, water buffalo, peacocks and crocodiles. There was one giant crocodile hanging out in a dry spot in the lake, a dead fox being eaten by crows, a dead water buffalo floating in the water and a lot of elephants! A baby one a month old elephant that seemed as if it couldn’t stand up on its own. At the end around sunset, is when I saw the most elephants and I could have stayed there for hours watching them, but we had to get back by 6, it’s what time it ended. On the way back, we passed a bunch of local kids playing volleyball, so I jumped out of the truck and played a bit with them. When it got too dark to see the ball the game stopped and I walked the rest of the way back.  A perfect way to end an amazing day.