24 February Sri Lanka road trip

Yala National Park

Reluctant to leave Polly and Jackster for more than 4 days we embarked on a whistle stop tour of the south west corner with our emphasis to be on the natural beauty of the country. One friend in the marina offered to visit Polly each day and another friend kindly offered to check our mooring lines each day. With the safety net in place we were ready to go.

black face lamur

tusker

peacock

Our first destination was Yala National Park which took an afternoon and two crazy local buses to reach. If you've ever enjoyed the thrill of a roller coaster ride try a Sri Lanka bus; they overtake on blind bends, squeeze through impossible gaps and all done with horns blaring. Yala is a popular tourist destination because it has the highest density of leopards anywhere in the world. There are no predators here higher than leopards and they flourish.

eagle

grid lock safari style

We'd pre booked a whole day safari. It's an early start and a late finish. Our day began with a 5am pick up to allow time to drive to the park gates, buy tickets and join the queue of 50 safari jeeps for the 6am opening of the gate. It was our lucky day. Our driver took a call from one of his colleagues to telling him where we could see one sleeping in a tree. Our driver did a snappy U turn leaving buffaloes and crocodiles in our muddy wake as we, and the other 70 jeeps, raced over pot holed tracks to converge on the one leopard. We arrived and joined the queue of vehicles as each took group took their turn to photograph a wild leopard. He looked quite docile to me, lounging along a bough, occasionally flicking his tail, moving his head. We were told the profile of his head indicated it was a male cat. We stayed and watched for half an hour. Too far away for our cameras to get a decent picture I've cheated and taken one from the internet.

in our 'camouflage' gear

After a decent lunch of chicken curry served from the back of the jeep we spent the rest of the day bumping along the tracks seeing a rare tusker elephant (only 1 in 10 males develop tusks) and two more lone males. The herd of females and youngsters had a day off from being watched, but there were plenty of peacocks strutting their stuff, mongooses running amongst the scrub and a nice sighting of black faced lamur apes.

Ella early morning

The next day, day three of our road trip, we were able to take a direct bus to Ella. Ella is in the heart of the tea plantation area and in the cooler elevation of the Horton Plains. The journey was as memorable as our destination. A race up the escarpment with steep drops to our side made for oohs and aahs at the views and the impossible overtaking manouevres.

All aboard

In the cool of Ella we enjoyed a visit to a tea production factory where the process of turning the tea leaves into a drink was shown and explained. All the work is done in the cool of the morning; the picking by Tamil ladies who can pick up to 20kgs of leaves each, the fermenting, drying, grading and packing. We arrived midday and saw the last half an hour of work for that day.

just one tea bag please

riding in the tuk tuk

Ella is a very popular tourist spot and has many good restaurants. I had meal or rice and seven curries served in a steamed banana leaf with pappadoms and mango chutney. David was in the mood for a burger and chips. Both good choices at the the Chilled Out cafe.

Post lunch we walked up into the hills through tea bush fields (?) to a hotel come restaurant atop a peak for afternoon tea with a chilly breeze and a stunning view over Ella gap and further uphill walk to the top of Little Adam's Peak.

tea bushes

atop Little Adam's Peak

Our last day of travel was where the transport was the feature; one of the classic train journeys of the world. The ride between Ella on the plain down to Kandy passes over the Horton Plain affording great views across the country. It wends it's way downhill for six hours through tunnels and over bridges. If we'd had more time we would have made a break in our journey to visit Kandy, but I've been before and David isn't a temple devotee. Today we stayed on the train and continued on to Colombo Fort station where we changed trains for the express to Galle. With a lack of signage finding the correct platform and the right train, ie express vs all stopping, to Galle was a challenge. After asking many local travellers we did make it to the right train. Unfortunately this was a 5pm commuter train with a barge to get in the door and on, elbows and pushing were the order of the day, and then stand in the crush. It was reminiscent of London in the rush hour. If we ducked down we could just see the sun setting  acoss the Indian Ocean. We'd caught our first train at 6.45am and alighted from the last train at 7pm. With a tuk tuk back to the Customs port we were home and relieved to find Polly hadn't escaped and been eaten by wild dogs and Jackster was still sitting comfortably.

view from train

 

VW van as rolling stock