Grand Elephant Safari - 21st November

Up early to bird around the garden, where we managed to call up a cracking Indian Pitta, a  hearty breakfast of string hoppers and coconut milk curry and much more. Then we drove off to join a safari in Udawalawe National Park. We were required to use a specially modified Jeep and use one of the park drivers and trackers. The tracker had phenomenal eyesight, picking out small birds and identifying the correctly. The more we got into the birds and other wildlife, the more they got into it. We saw countless other Jeeps with disinterested tourists with equally disinterested guides. It must be a pleasure for them to get customers who share their passion, instead of just looking for different ways to spend their money.

Indian pitta in the grounds of the hotel

A zitting cisticola scratching its zits?

The reserve is famous for its 500 or so Indian Elephants, which were interesting, and not bothered by these strange vehicles with humans in their territory. Things would change if we were to be on foot. Of course, we saw lots of birds, but we were hoping to see a Jaguar here. No such luck though - we really needed to go to Yala National Park if we wanted to score with them. However, we had good sightings of a couple of Jungle Cats. No different in size to a domestic cat, this one appeared to be a pregnant female looking for herby medicinal plants. Another Jeep stopped briefly to look for a few seconds and continued on its cargo's disinterested way.

Indian elephant blocking its calf from approaching our jeep

Jungle cat

Green bee-eater

Indian roller

Malabar pied hornbill

Blue-tailed bee-eater

Black-shouldered kite

Lesser adjutant

We decided to drive straight on to Sinharaja National Park after we packed and checked out. We stopped at a great restaurant on the way. A local place for local people, but offering great cheap food. Pradeep and Kalinga wanted to teach us how to eat with our hands, which the locals all do as a tradition. It was messier than it should have been, but entertaining none-the-less. I would have done better to use more rice and less curry to make the mixture in my hands less sloppy.

We arrived at the Rock View Motel, which is about 10km from the park entrance and has a view over a tea plantation and some trees in the valley bottom, but definitely no views of any rocks that we could make out. A dinner of, you guessed it, curry and rice. Marvellous.