Day 5
We enjoyed the in-house breakfast at Wild Lotus and spend the morning at the resort, looking forward for the safari at Yala National Park in the afternoon.
We boarded jeep for the safari at Wild Lotus at 2 pm and had a quick lunch at Chef Lady, a small restaurant and we are on our way.
The drive to the park, situated about 20 kms away took 30 minutes. After routine checking of our passports and tickets we entered the park at about 3 pm and for the next three hours criss crossed the roads inside the jungle trail spotting numerous birds and animals.
The park has a protected area of nearly 130,000 hectares of land, divided into 5 zones, consisting of light forests, scrubs, grasslands and lagoons. The park has several varieties of mammals and birds species. It has the biggest concentration of leopards in the world and also have elephants, bears, sambars, jackals, spotted dear, peacocks, and crocodiles. We took Zone 1, known as leopard territory. The mud roads are well kept and except few places where the driver had to rely on 4-wheel drive, most of the jungle trail has good roads.
Tsunami of 2004 struck the park and about 250 people in and around the park were consumed by the rampaging waves, but amazingly no animals were killed, cementing the theory of ‘sixth sense’ of animals.
We returned to Wild Lotus at 7 pm and after quick shower and usual sunset refreshments, had in-house dinner before retiring for the night.
Tomorrow we leave Lankan coast line and head towards tea country hills of central Sri Lanka.
End of day five.
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