Yala National Park - Sri Lanka

Fortunately, I decided to visit the "Yala National Park" after all. For that, I had to go back a bit against my travel direction, but it was a good decision.

I took the local bus again, which is fun to travel with here, and price-wise, it is unbeatable, except for the train, which was not available to me here. I traveled 85 km on the road, which took 2.5 hours, and I arrived in "Tissamaharama", but people simply say Tissa.

By chance, I ended up in a hotel near the bus station, which was personally run by Mr. Tissa, the 'Chamagne Villa' hotel. He is an experienced provider for safaris in the national park. He is also mentioned in the "Stefan Loose" and of course on Trip Advisor.

Upon my arrival, he immediately invited me on a private afternoon tour on the outskirts of the national park. And one should not miss this, as he calmly drives with the jeep without scaring away the wildlife too much. We spotted quite a few magnificent animals. Like elephants, monkeys, crocodiles, buffaloes, and also a few peacocks. The following day, we went on a full day safari. And that went completely differently, of course. The alarm clock rang at 3:30 am, and at 4 am, I was in our jeep (unfortunately not from Mr. Tissa) and we raced towards the entrance of the national park, which was about 30 km away. On board, there was a nice American, a fat Frenchman, and a nice gentleman from Kuwait.

At 5:30 am, we were at the park entrance and now had to wait. We were in second position, with at least 100 more jeeps behind us!!! At exactly six o'clock, the barrier went up and we set off. And when we did, we raced into the park for the first 10 minutes as if being chased by hornets. My first thought was, what the hell? I wouldn't have been surprised if we had run over a few animals together. Then we turned right and finally continued at a leisurely pace. And little by little, we spotted several animals again, including many birds. Like bee-eaters, herons, peacocks, or even a kingfisher flew by. A small highlight was the king of birds, the hornbill! (Which was pretty much denied to me in Indonesia last year). And I was able to take a great picture of them (there were 2 of them). At some point, the driver said he had spotted a sloth bear, and suddenly everyone was looking for it (a little hunt), but it did the right thing and hid. At noon, we took a rest by the sea. Here, we had lunch (rice and curry) and took a nap. I sat in front of the beach and enthusiastically watched the sea and the waves for 90 minutes, it was somehow stunning. I think I found my favorite beach here (no swimming allowed).

At 2 pm, we continued, and we were surprised once again by the magnificent wildlife. Again, many elephants, deer, wild boars, buffaloes, crocodiles, and small monitors.

Then came the news that a leopard (female with 2 baby leopards) was spotted. Was this going to be the highlight now? It started again, all Jeeps were going around in circles like crazy (big hunt). This went on until 5:51 pm, unfortunately, we all had to leave the park at 6 pm. And under these circumstances, I wished that no jeep would enter the park tomorrow and we could finally let the animals live in peace without being chased!!!

Mr. Tissa was very disappointed when I arrived back at the hotel because I didn't see a leopard. And he offered me another safari the next day at a super special price and with a promise to see the leopard tomorrow. I thanked him very much for that, but I declined the offer. This day was very exhausting, we were on the road for 15 hours. But the many animals made it a great experience.