Tissamaharama - many animals

This time we continued along the south coast by bus. Some locals referred to the friendly bus drivers as "totally crazy" and our previous encounters with their driving style confirmed this statement. So we were very curious, but fortunately everything went very smoothly and reassuringly.

Arriving in Tissa in the evening, we had already booked everything from Mirissa, so we just took a little walk to have dinner (ordered a record-breaking 11 rotis) and went to bed early. Our highlight started at 4:30 in the morning and the joyful anticipation kept us awake for a while.

At exactly 4:30, our driver picked us up, quickly picked up another couple, and then drove us to the Yala National Park, 30 km away. With its 1500 sqm, this park is one of the largest and oldest national parks in Sri Lanka. Here, in addition to a colorful variety of animals (more on that later), it also has the highest density of leopards in the world. We were told that in the current dry season, the chances of seeing a leopard are particularly high. So we could hardly wait for it to finally start. However, our guide parked about 60 other jeeps far in front of the entrance around 5 o'clock, and said it would take another 20 minutes and disappeared. Half sleeping, half excited, we tried to recognize a system of when each jeep is allowed to drive, but we were unsuccessful. When our driver came back around 5:40, the sun was already relatively risen, we suddenly started driving, passing all the others, and were immediately rewarded for our patience. Just before the actual entrance, a lone elephant strolled leisurely along the road and provided the first spectacular pictures of the day. Shortly afterwards, we finally entered the park among the first 15 jeeps and were excited. Here and there we saw water buffaloes and some peacocks relatively soon, but our guide said in the beginning we would only focus on the leopard. It didn't take 10 minutes and his phone rang - this was always accompanied by a significant increase in speed, as we later found out - and our jeep drove at full speed to the leopard sighting spot. Fortunately, we arrived among the first 10 jeeps and were able to get a good view of the king of the national park (unfortunately too far away for our mobile phone cameras). It didn't take 5 minutes and all 60 jeeps were gathered in a row behind us, but we could enjoy the view until the leopard said goodbye and some park staff resolved the traffic chaos (besides the leopard, we saw at least 3-4 rear-end collisions of the standing jeeps at that spot). Back out of the crowd, the safari took us to flamingos, which were leisurely bathing with crocodiles, wild boars, deer, until the phone rang again. This time a bear. Unfortunately, we weren't that lucky and couldn't get a glimpse of the bear. Our guide showed us beautiful secluded places and we were able to expand our list of animals seen to include squirrels, cows, rabbits, eagles, peacocks, kingfishers, armadillos, dogs, ibises, marabous, and blackbirds. During the tour, a total of 2 phone calls led to an extreme change of pace by our driver and we were rewarded with a brief glimpse of a leopard both times. After 7 hours in the jeep, we slowly made our way back to the accommodation and on the way back, we were able to watch a family of elephants bathing. So we really took everything from the park.

Back at the accommodation, a power nap turned into a cleverly sleepy afternoon, until we set off for the lake in Tissa early in the evening. Every evening, a kind of shift change takes place in the trees there. At exactly 6:40-6:50, the white herons return from their daily business and settle on one tree by the hundreds. At the same time, thousands of bats start their night shift. The whole twilight is covered with shadows of bats. A truly impressive spectacle.

The next day, our journey continued towards Ella.