Oh man we were up so early to get to the airport this morning. Our flight left Bangkok airport at 9 am. So we had to be up at 6am to make our way in, however leaving the accomodation at 6am proved good for 2 reasons. 1. We beat the crazy crazy Bangkok traffic. 2. We got to see the sunrise. The drive to the airport was uneventful as was getting through the airport.
The flight was 3 and a half hours to Srilanka and we had paid for a neighbor free seat so it was a fairly easy and no fuss flight besides one annoying teenager in front of us that kept dropping his pillow. When you land at Colombo airport it feels like you are going to land in ocean as the majority of the decent is over the ocean.
Arrival in Srilanka was easy, immigration was a breeze and before we knew it we were officially in our 19th Country of Srilanka! We withdrew some money and then found our wonderful driver for the trip Chamila. Chamila presented us with some shell necklaces and welcomed us to Srilanka. Now most normal people when visiting Srilanka do a very particular loop, which involves the main tourist citites. Me being me however decided to take us to the lost remote part of Srilanka first. That meant the we headed North right up to Wilpattu National Park which is literally in the middle of nowhere. So the drive was about 4 hours North through very rural towns and wilderness. Why is this where I decided we needed to go…. well its because this is one of the quietest national parks in Srilanka and is your best chance to see a sloth bear and a leopard.
We saw so many cows, goats, lakes, dogs and monkeys on the drive, we even saw a mongoose. We stopped for lunch and tried our first traditional Srilankan Dish Kottu Roti. It is make with shredded roti stirfried with vegatables, spices, egg and in our case chicken. It was very delicious but a little spicy. I will have to get used to that. Anthony was also very happy as he finally got another banana juice which is one of his favourite drinks. After more time on the road we finally made it to our accomodation in Wilpattu which is Eagle Resort Wilpattu.
It is a really beautiful accomodation and we were offered a welcome drink and settled into our room. We had a bit of time to rest after a long travel day which was good as if anyone who has travelled with me knows I don’t like to waste time and we had a night tour to go on. The hope on the night tour was to see some of the local cats in particular a fishing cat, a rusty spotted cat, a jungle cat and I wouldn’t say no to an otter or a leopard.
We got to look at a beautiful sunset overlooking the property and got talking to some of the other guests who are from Srilanka.
Then it was night safari time. We were picked up in a safari jeep by 3 guys. 2 of them were spotters and onein charge of driving. I dont think I can explain this experience to you, driving in a open aired jeep down these little dirt roads in the pitch black of night was exhilirating. The spotters had the most amazing eyes and could see everything. During the whole trip we saw a Jerdon’s Nightjar, Ringtail civet cat, Plain Prinia, Ashy Prinia, Slow Loris, Malabar Pied Hornbill, Green Garden lizard, some elephants which scaddled away so fast, Oriental garden lizard, White breasted waterhen, house cat, spotted deer and a jungle cat. The slow loris was a particularly rare find so much so that even our tour guide got his camera out to take his own photos.
We also had dinner provided and the wonderful men who took us out invited us to dinner at one of their friends places. Now this was not a normal dinner spot.. oh no.. We were invited into a local farmers overnight hut. You see the farmers here have to have someone on watch overnight because the elephants decide they want to come out of the national park and eat eveyones harvests, so every farmer has bells or alarms that go off to tell them if an elephant is enterting their property. They have go get out of their bed which is in a hut outside and then go try and scare the elphants away with firecrackers. It was amazing to get to see, he even showed us his elephant alarm. He said the other animals all come through as well but they are all friendly. We had delicious dinner of rice and dahl and then the beautiful farmer got us some of his corn and roasted it fresh on the fire for us. It was delicious.
Overall this night safari was amazing and although I will be so tired tomorrow I am so excited to go back out and see what we can see.