Leopards and wildlife in Yala national park
Arrack, Ginger beer and lime was on our menu late night on the 21st.
We had so much fun with the owner of Regina Inn, a great friend of Jayrantha the “King of the jungle”, owner of the safari company.
It says that on his business card and this man and his brother are truly the kings of this jungle!
5:45 am our alarms rang, we both got up fast and excited for this safari, even though the headache was pounding pretty wild.
His brother Tooty is a very happy man, you get the feeling that this man might be Tarzan!
He was driving a big Land Rover, the best of the best there is when driving off road.
An old one, but they are really powerful and does its job, gets you anywhere!
The back had 3 rows of seats, the one higher than the other .
We drove off, the first stop was at a food shack, probably the only one open.
Bananas and coconut rootis for breakfast!
It takes about 20 mins to drive from Tissa to Yala.
A great smooth road, even here you can see a lot of birds and other wildlife.
Watch out for the cows that are laying on the roads, packs of 40 from time to time.
You get scared that the driver will hit them, but Tooty knows how to handle cows on the road!
Just honk and drive, and hope for the best.
No cows got injured during this trip!
Coming up at the park, you see this place filled of jeeps, it’s crowded.
You get a bit bummed that this will not be a good safari with this many cars.
Once in the park you meet a jeep now and then, it is not crowded at all!
Tooty have 33 years of experience so he knows these roads and all the shortcuts!
The landscape is pretty amazing, the rock formations all over are round and there are massive egg shaped rocks standing up at its highest point on top of another round shaped rock, it all looks so unreal.
The jungle is really dense , but there’s many trees that stick out that looks like perfect spots for wildlife to be in, like leopards!
Paradise birds, like kingfishers were flying everywhere, all in different colors.
Male peacocks spreading their majestic feathers to impress the females,
big pelicans spreading their wings high up in the tree tops and mongooses running around on the road looking for pray!
You also see a lot of wild buffaloes all over the park.
From time to time you see and elephant lurking in the bushes eating from trees.
Got to say I love elephants, they are so awesome to watch, specially when they are in the wild!
They look so in peace and harmony with the nature, and they look pretty funny.
To experience a beautiful sunrise at a safari is amazing, put it up on your bucketlist!
Tooty took us to a lake covered with Lilly pads , that lake at a point became a river so it had a little waterfall.
Below this waterfall there was 4 crocodiles laying there, one of them had an open mouth and were just waiting for fish to come down the waterfall and then catch it!
Some of the other crocodiles were just laying there enjoying the hot weather and the scorching sun.
These ones were big I would say around 3 meters in length!
Seeing all these animals makes me even more amazed about how awesome this planet and its habitants really are, amazing earth!
The nature is truly perfect!
For lunch we stopped at a beach!
It’s incredible that this national park actually is situated on the coast, so it has a fantastic long white stretched beach, probably a few kilometers!
We had some really good curry, 3 different ones and all with a perfect spice!
Tooty also chopped up some pineapple and mangoes for us!
Not only the food here is very tasty , but also the fruit! It’s so sweet ! Love it.
We still had not seen a leopard, which was a bit disappointing, but we still had half the day so we had hope to catch the glimpse of one.
At the beach we had a nap, which we both needed.
We could still feel a bit from the day before, the Arrack seemed to have put a little hammer inside my head, giving me some pressure in the back of my head.
Woke up way more fresh and felt ready for another safari session!
Tooty took us all the time to different areas of the park, so we got to see different animals and hopefully find the leopard.
You are sitting there super excited looking at all the trees everywhere, after a while you start seeing patterns on the branches, and also movements.
Your brain starts playing a trick on you, because you really want to see this animal.
Wild boars and spotted deer running around on the open fields, a beautiful sight!
It started to get late and still no leopards.
Both me and Erin started to lose hope, I began thinking about staying another night, I had to see one!
It felt like Tooty was heading back so it was all over, a beautiful safari with gorgeous nature and wildlife.
There was still some hope because we were still looking at all the trees and branches for that leopard.
On the way back we saw one more elephant standing on the shore of a lake drinking some water, and now the sun was going down so the whole sky was getting orange, and in the background there were these massive round shaped rocks, one of them looked like something from the movie “Lion King”
It was so beautiful, like the perfect picture or a dream, but this was for real!
While looking at this, Tooty suddenly stopped the car, and in front of us there was a leopard walking on the mud road!
The color was so orange and the pattern was so black and sharp, and it was big!
I pulled up my GoPro and started filming, the leopard stopped and looked at us.
That gave me shivers, it felt like he was going to run towards the car and attack!
The leopard was only about 8 meters away.
The feeling of when you are not in control over the situation, the nature is, it’s pretty scary but at the same time so exhilarating!
It looked up at us and then walked slowly in to the jungle.
We were insanely happy to have seen this and a close encounter.
There were about 50 jeeps in the park, and we were the only one to see a leopards that day.
We backed up a bit, and then we saw it again walking on the rocks in the jungle, just a few meters away!
Then we just heard branches breaking and how he got further and further in.
Tooty turned off the car and we just watched it go deeper in until it vanished.
He phoned the minister of the park that is driving there almost every day try to find these animals.
Telling him about our experience and told him to get to our position.
We turned around the car to see if we could see it again.
From the jungle this cat came back out on the road in front of us!
What an unbelievable experience!
We watched it again until he walked back into the jungle.
High fives happy shouts were going on in the car, then other jeeps start coming in but the leopards was no where to be seen!
This was the last spot Tooty had in mind to look at, he had seen leopard there a few times, and once more again!
We left and one the way out we saw some more elephants and even some coyotes were now out when the sun was almost all gone.
It took us 11 hours to managed to see the leopard, but it was all worth it.
During these hours we saw a lot of animals, so the whole safari was amazing.
If you only go to hopefully see a leopards then maybe going a few hours before sunset might be enough, this time seems to be then best to spot then.
When the sun is up is way too hot for some animals to be out so most of the hide in the shade.
Booking with M.M Jayrantha within Sri Lanka 0777-073-813 and from outside 94-777-073-813
Monkey
