We left Nuwara Eliya after breakfast making a few quick stops to photograph various things that caught our eye, including the horse track in the middle of town, a leek farm, the terraced fields, a Hindu temple, muslim men praying in a field, great vistas and a beautiful waterfall.
After lunch, our safari jeep driver picked us up at the restaurant and took us to Yala National Park, one of the most popular in the country because of its high ratio of leopard. The bird life is also incredible but I’ll only share a few favourites here and write a more thorough blog about birds in Sri Lanka later on when I have the time to correctly name them all.
After some driving around, we saw a queue and knew there was something good. After close to 30 minutes, we finally inched along to the area where you could see, through the brush, some leopard spots. While it was exciting to say we saw a leopard, as photographers, it was a little disappointing. The warden was there to at least help move the vehicles along. The traffic jam was like nothing I’ve seen in Africa and while the new warden has cracked down on the drivers to enforce the rules, it was frustrating to see some cut in front of others and guests getting a little irate. We still left feeling like we’d seen a lot, including more elephants and a black necked hare but we are happy to have another try in the morning when hopefully there won’t be as many vehicles (it will be a Monday morning too). Wish us luck!
