Country #118: Living the Leopard Life

Getting from one Sri Lankan beach town to another had been wonderfully easy. There were cheap public buses, which would normally be my first choice but there was also the Pickme app (aka Sri Lankan Uber) that offered a choice of taxis or tuktuks. For a couple of dollars, you could go town to town, door to door without ever having to worry if you had gotten on the wrong bus. I was getting spoiled. I was getting soft.

All of it came to an end when I left the beaches and headed towards the southeast coast and its crazy abundance of wildlife. The further you go from the major towns and the beach area, the less likely you are to get a Pickme. I now had a choice: to pay full price for a taxi or figure out the bus system. Anyone that has ever traveled with me knows this is not a real choice. I tend to have more time than money and will almost always opt for public transportation. I could rhapsodize that this is about getting the local feel and becoming one with the people but let's face it, I'm cheap.

Also, no joke, I often legit love foreign buses. Don't think of the typical Greyhound experience with its overwhelming stench of misery. Think windows open, Bollywood music blaring, drivers stopping in the middle of nowhere to pick up an old lady and her chicken. I had experienced this often in Fiji, where for some inexplicable reason, the drivers were all amateur dj's with a penchant for reggaeton. Now as I made my way to Yala with a bootleg copy Mumbai's latest film blaring, I was actually glad that I no longer had the Pickme option.

From the bus station, it was a short ride to the wonderful Wild Breeze Lodge where Gihan was waiting with a cold drink and his pet dragon.

And by pet dragon, I mean a wild gigantic monitor lizard, larger than the one I had encountered in Galle, who let it be known that he ruled over these lands. All I could do was humbly tell Dracarys that I meant no trouble and hope for the best.

After getting settled in, Gihan and I sat down to go over my plans for the next couple of days. Obviously, there would be safaris. Yala National Park, which is massive and is broken up into 5 blocks, has the highest density of leopards in the world and dammit, I wanted to see a leopard. The problem was that due to a reduced amount of tourism resulting from the Easter bombings, there were fewer safaris happening. He could get me in with a group the next morning but if I wanted to do a safari that evening, I would have to do a private jeep. For someone who had just arrived on the chicken bus to save money, this sounded less than ideal. 

It was decided that I would go on an afternoon tour with his cousin while he continued making calls to try to find someone to share a safari vehicle with me. 

The cousin was very sweet but also very quiet. For example, he stopped in front of a bunch of trees and just pointed with no further explanation. Had I known what I was looking at, perhaps I would not have started shrieking in delight upon noticing that the trees were chock full of bats. Naw, who am I kidding? I would still have gone nuts. I love bats.

And there were just so many of them. I was in bat heaven. He offered to bring me back to this spot for sunset so I could see them all take flight. If the safari didn't work out, this was a solid Plan B.

And that was nearly the case. When we got back to the Lodge, Gihan gave me the bad news that he had not been able to find a group for me to join. This created a conundrum. I really wanted to see that leopard and two tries is undeniably better than one but I was still early in my travels and trying to stick to a budget.

Before I go further, I should point out that I know I have a problem with relative pricing. By this, I mean that when I am in a country, instead of constantly converting every price quoted to dollars, I try to get a feel for what something should cost in the local currency and go with that. As a result, I have on more than once occasion, haggled furiously to get what I feel is a fair price only to realize that I just spend 20 minutes fighting over the equivalent of 50 cents. I mention this because the price of a private safari was approximately $50 USD. If you would tell me at home, in Miami, that for $50 I could have my own jeep, safari guide and possibility of seeing a leopard, I would be on a safari every single day and twice on Sunday. But here, in Sri Lanka, I was paying around $9 per night for a hostel, around $3 for a decent sit down meal including drinks, maybe a $1 for the chicken bus that brought me to Yala. $50 in that light is a lot. It's like 50 chicken buses.

But...what if I did the morning safari and the leopards were a no show? Conundrum.

In the end, I decided to splurge. This meant I could visit two different parts of the park. For the evening safari, I would be going to Block 5. This is a less visited area with a pretty diverse array of wildlife.

My guide, Asela, tried valiantly to explain this to me, as well as the history of the park- established in 1938, most visited park in Sri Lanka, yadda yadda yadda. I had one question and one question only- where are the leopards? They are definitely there but the problem is that big cats tend to be very elusive and if they want to hide in a park this large, the advantage is theirs.

Yala is also known for its bird watching, with 215 species calling the park home. Asela was a pro at spotting them and for the first hour or so, it felt like we were well on our way to seeing them all.

Occasionally, we would encounter another safari vehicle but they few and far between. It was as if we had the park to ourselves. That was until a jeep pulled up alongside us and said something to our driver.  I missed the Sri Lankan version but it was translated to me as "Madam, hang on please." And with that, we were off to races, hauling ass across Block 5.

As we neared a valley and saw every other visitor lined up along the ridge, I transformed into an excited 5 year old "It's a leopard, isn't it?! Where is he? Do you see the leopard?  Where are you, leopard?  LEOPARD!!!!" 

Although I could not see him, Asela and the driver had indeed spotted a leopard walking across the valley, off in the distance. They put the car in reverse and left the tourist pack. "What?!  That's it?? We are leaving the leopard???" Only we weren't. My guys had a good idea of which way the leopard was going to go and positioned us just so that in a couple of minutes, who came strolling right by us? A fucking leopard.

For the next couple of hours, we watched him alternate between resting on a rock and patrolling the area. We thought maybe he was hunting but the nonchalance displayed by a pair of peacocks indicated otherwise. He was just a very chill leopard.

I worried that maybe we were cutting off his access to some other part of the park (although he could easily go around us, as he had already done). There had to be a reason that he was holding his ground even while surrounded by safari vehicles.

Notice the deer in the background. This could have been a 2 course meal had he been so inclined.

It was Asela who solved the mystery. Sometime before our arrival, a poor monkey had met his demise, either at the hands (jaws?) of our leopard friend or otherwise.  Either way, the monkey was hidden in the brush and the leopard was keeping a vigilant eye on him. This was nature's equivalent of writing your name on your lunch with a sharpie. He was just making sure no one else took his Lunchables.

We continued to watch him on and off until it was closing time. As it was, we had to do another "Hang on, Madam", this time in pouring rain, in order to get out of the park before the gates closed but suffice it to say that this was $50 well spent.

The next morning was my group safari to Block 1. As I met my fellow safari goers, I told them all about my evening with a leopard. The area we were going to is known for having the largest quantity so we were sure to see them.

Until we weren't. This part of the park is certainly prettier, with rivers and cool rock formations, but try as we might, we could not find a single leopard. It was enough to make me feel slightly guilty for showing off my fricking amazing leopard pics first thing in the morning.

All was not lost however. We did come across a herd of elephants that had a newborn baby in their midst. Our guide estimated he was less than a week old. Watching that little one trying to figure out what to do with all that trunk was the very definition of joyful.

My elephant watching didn't end there. After the safari, Gihan had made arrangements for my onward travel.  As much as I wanted to do another Bolly-bus, there would have been a lot of backtracking and transferring to get to Ella, a mountain town 2.5 hours north so he found a friend who was willing to take me for a reasonable price.

I was in the passenger seat, scrolling through my phone, when we slowed down. I glanced up to see why and there in the middle of the road, there was an elephant. Not in the park, mind you...just on the highway. (insert wide eyed emoji).

This would happen twice...twice!!  How amazing are you as a country when you can be driving to the next town, minding your own business and an elephant comes ambling along?! Twice!!

I had been saddened to leave the beaches on the southern coast but no one had told me there would be elephants on the road!!  And lounging leopards in the parks!!  And dragons in the hostels!!! I was more excited than ever to see what the rest of this amazing country would hold.