Sunday, 17 June 2012

Weekend safaris in Sri Lanka

The 2nd to the 19th of June I went on a business trip to Sri Lanka to visit our office located in Colombo. As I was working normal hours I had the weekend by myself. I looked into any activities I could do during the down time, and fairly quickly I realized that Sri Lanka had a national park down south with quite a lot of wildlife. Apparently they have one of the highest densities of leopards in the world.

So the choice was basically made for me, so the two weekends of the 9th – 10th and the 16th – 17th I got up early Saturday, drove to Yala National Park and arrived at lunch time (I had a driver, no way I was to drive by myself in Sri Lanka. It is said that the only place worse driving than Sri Lanka is India, and that says quite a lot!), had lunch and a game drive, back to the camp where dinner was served, relaxation until the next morning where we had an early game drive, back for breakfast and ending with being brought to a pickup point where I would then be driven back to Colombo. It was two fantastic weekends to get away from the city’s intensity.

The first weekend I was alone in the camp and the second a colleague joined me after seeing the photos I had taken on the first trip and also an English couple joined us.

Apparently, while we are out on the second weekend’s morning drive, a large male leopard came straight through our camp between my tent and the next in the row. It could have been interesting if it had happened when I was still present in the camp.

Young land monitor.

Tufted gray langur.

Jungle fowl.

Water buffalo and egret. 

Kingfisher.

Wild boars and the park's only (known) albino boar.

Leopard in the dusk.

Sloth bear.

White-bellied sea eagle.

Toque macaque monkey.

Jackal.

Orange-breasted green pigeon.

Leopard.


Lizard

Small snake visiting camp.

No comments:

Post a Comment