We have come to Tissa specifically to visit Yala National Park. The town itself is quite pleasant, surrounded by paddy fields and dominated by a huge white dagoba, but for tourists it is primarily a base for picking up tours to Yala 21km east. We have arranged a 6-hour jeep safari through our guest house, Travellers Home, at a cost of 55 pounds. We set out at 5am along with a young French couple who have been travelling for 17 months, including 12 months spent working their way around Australia, and a Swiss guy who has been travelling in India.
Yala National Park and strict nature reserve together cover an area of 126,786 hectares accessed along bone jangling unsurfaced roads. A glorious landscape of scrub, light forest, grassland and brackish lagoons with blue seas sparkling in the distance. Most people seem to come here with a driver, tracker and guide which seems quite excessive since we manage more than adequately with a driver who does the job of all three.
With only 25 or so in the whole park, Leopards are particularly difficult to track down and not everyone who visits Yala is lucky enough to see one. So spotting one is our driver’s number one priority. Quite incredibly he eventually manages to find one sleeping high up in a tree, the only one anyone has seen this morning, and there are quite a few jeeps circling the park looking for one. We come alongside a group of elephants and a jackal wandering nochalantly down the road quite unperturbed by us as he saunters round our stationary jeep and continues on his way. Mongoose, buffalo, wild boar, sambar, spotted deer, crocodiles and many, many birds including, ibis, egrets, eagles, darters, kingfishers, bee eaters, painted storks and many more which we can’t identify are all within a few yards of the jeep. The only animal we didn’t see was the shaggy coated sloth bear. A stop at the river for some respite from the discomforts of the jeep is a welcome relief. Frogs skittering across the surface of the water and some entertaining monkeys provide an added diversion.
We round off our trip with a quick stop at the beach and then back to town for some lunch and to nurse our battered bodies. It’s an experience well worth the effort involved in getting here.