SRI LANKA: YALA NATIONAL PARK

The third national park we visited in Sri Lanka was Yala National Park, the most visited national park in the country. Covering 378 square miles, the area was designated a national park in 1938.

Bob went on an early morning drive while I slept in, but I joined him and Sanjay for the afternoon drive and a drive the following morning.

It was nice to have this instructive diagram at the entrance, and I'm glad I didn't bring my trumpet along on this trip. If I can't play it in Yala, what's the point of packing it?

I love this logo:

The first thing Sanjay pointed out to us was this weird rock in the mud:

But then it began to wiggle:

. . . a head emerged:

. . . and then it took off:

. . . although not exactly at a mad dash:

Eventually the soft-shell turtle sank back into its muddy home:

We were fortunate to have some great sightings of various raptors, including this beautiful specimen. I wrote down a lot of the names of animals we spotted as Sanjay rattled them off, but I don't have this one. Bob thinks it is a crested hawk eagle:

These two shots show the long, thin legs and the feathers on the top of the head that look like a native American headdress:

Prepare yourself for a couple more elephant photos. Okay, okay--six photos and one video, but it could have been forty photos and three videos. I think I showed great restraint.

Look carefully. How many elephants do you see? If you said three, you are right:

That has to be a pretty new little baby:

We really enjoyed watching this mama elephant eat. She scrapes the ground with her big foot, pulling up grass by the roots, then uses her trunk and foot to scoop the grass into a neat little pile that she can pick up with her trunk. Before she lifts the clump of grass to her mouth, she bangs it against the ground to shake off the dirt clinging to the roots:

The mama and older sibling elephant were very protective of the baby, never letting it wander or even move away from physical contact with one or both of them: 

They walked quite close to our vehicle and another one that pulled up alongside them:

The elephants were happy to share their space with a couple of water buffalo:

Water buffalo don't have the best hygiene:

However, we saw water buffalo all over the park lazily lounging in muddy bathtubs. Maybe that's why they are called water buffalo. It doesn't seem to clean them off:

Sometimes they are packed like sardines in a tin:

Other times they have space to spread out:

Back view/front view. The model of this gorgeous turquoise feather-covered tuxedo-style jacket is a white-breasted kingfisher:

His haute cuisine apparently includes bees:

Hey, hey! What's this? A green vine snake. I think we would have run right over it, but Sanjay threw on the brakes just in time.  At first it was crossing the road in front of us:

. . . but then it did a 180 and headed back into the grass:

The Sri Lankan sambar deer is one of the largest of the deer species:

This one had a baby with her:

The Sri Lankan spotted deer (aka axis deer) is much daintier:

A deer we saw the next day had a very impressive set of antlers:

Speaking of size, the Indian hare is huge:

According to the website Wonderopolis, hares tend to be larger than rabbits, with longer hind legs and longer ears with black markings. Rabbits like to eat softer grasses and vegetables, and hares like to eat harder bark and twigs. Rabbits live in underground burrows, and hares make nests above-ground. Hares can't be domesticated and are pretty anti-social, tending to live solitary lives.

At the beginning of the drive, we had seen four boars foraging next to a stream:

At the end of the afternoon drive we saw this ugly brute nosing around with his huge proboscis:

We got a bit of the evil eye:

We returned to the hotel around 7:15 PM, just in time for dinner and an early night in preparation for the next day.

We got up at 4:20 AM and were on the road by 4:50. We arrived at Yala National Park at about 5:40 and were 4th in line for the 6:00 opening of the gate.

During the early morning drive on the previous day (which I had boycotted in exchange for more time in bed), Bob and Sanjay had a great leopard siting. Sanjay was determined to give me a similar experience. We had passed a turnout when suddenly Sanjay was pounding on the driver's side window, shouting something in Sinhalese and adding. "Leopards! Leopards!"  He couldn't have been more excited. We could see the silhouettes of what Sanjay said was a mother and older cub at the top of a far rock:

Zoomed in:

We watched for a while, and as we drove away, Sanjay pumped his fist. It was his sighting, unaided by anyone else, and a very difficult one at that. We drove around the large rocky area--quite a wide circumference--looking for a another view, but we never got one. Sanjay called a few friends leading tours in the same park, and as we headed away from the rock we passed dozens of vehicles headed towards the rock. I wonder if Sanjay notified them so that we would have the rest of the park to ourselves. Tricky guy.

We saw a mongoose, who didn't seem to be too bothered by our presence:

It looks a bit like a weasel, don't you think?

Um, Mr. Mongoose, pardon me, but that is not a sofa. Actually, you are sitting on elephant dung:

Next we saw the national bird of Sri Lanka, the dazzling Sri Lankan junglefowl:

What it lacks in brain power, it makes up for in flashiness, at least the male does. That female behind him, the subject of some kind of courting ritual, would be quite pretty if one didn't have to compare her to her luminous suitor:

And look at the size difference:

This gorgeous fellow, a bee eater, was perched on a branch right next to my window:

We stopped briefly by the seashore:

Working on his tan next to the water was this handsome mugger crocodile:

A bit further down, we got out to get a better look at the Indian Ocean and to eat the boxed lunches that Sanjay brought from our hotel. There are just a few places in Yala NP where visitors can get out of their cars. Patangala Rest House is one of those stops:

The water was probably the warmest ocean water I've ever been in--even warmer than the Caribbean. This was another pinch me experience. I never thought my feet would be wading in the Indian Ocean.

On December 26, 2004, the water was not nearly this enticing. Yala NP was in the direct path of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami that was the result of a 9.1 - 9.3 magnitude earthquake centered off the west coast of northern Sumatra. Three large tsunami waves, the largest 30 feet high, hit this beach and traveled for two miles inland. Forty-seven tourists and residents died, a mere fraction of the 30,000 to 35,000 people who were killed by the tsunami all over Sri Lanka. An estimated 228,000 people in 14 countries surrounding the Indian Ocean were killed. This tsunami was the third largest ever recorded. This is the same tsunami that wiped out the island of Phuket in Thailand.

An inscribed stone memorial pays tribute to the victims. The English version says, "In memory of the forty-seven lives taken by the tsunami. As an act of past revenge at 9:20 a.m. on the 26th December 2004 tsunami waves struck the Yala National Park taking the lives of fifteen Japanese & German visitors, twenty nine local visitors & two foreigners & one local reported missing. This monument is erected by the Department of Wildlife Conservation at the site of the tragedy in remembrance of the Visitors who died & reported missing."

A nearby metal sculpture represents the three tsunami waves that struck the area, with the fourth slide showing the level of water after the tsunami:

Fifteen years later, it's hard to imagine the devastation the water caused to this peaceful beach, but a stone foundation behind the wave sculpture (and where Bob was sitting to eat his lunch), reminds tourists that what was once here was swept irretrievably away, and not just structures, but 47 lives.

Luckily for us, we could continue our safari drive without carrying any of the angst of that day with us.

This little sweetheart, a sparrow-lark, dropped by for a visit, perching on the headrest in our jeep:

This crested serpent eagle sitting in some twisted branches looks like a prop for a scary movie--maybe a better fit for this area than the sparrow lark:

Moving on, there were still a few animals to see.

A red-wattled lapwing . . .

. . . and a yellow-wattled lapwing.

Betcha didn't know (or care) that there are two kinds of wattled lapwings.

No national park visit is complete without some monkey sightings. Here are some tufted gray langur monkeys:

Did you notice that baby at the bottom of the tree trunk?

They have such silky fur and such serious faces:

Two peahens walking down the road, straining their necks in search of a good-looking peacock:

Bob was pretty excited about this next series of photos--a crested hawk eagle eating a snake:

Down the gullet it goes . . .

. . . until it has disappeared:

Time to head out of the park . . .

. . . and back to our hotel for lunch and check out.

We passed this typical Buddha statue:

. . . a bevy (herd? flock?) of tuk-tuks:

. . . and a monument to the American invasion:

A great way to end a safari:

READING:
 London economics professor Sonali Deraniyagala, her husband, her two sons, and her parents (who lived in Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital) were enjoying their last day of an annual vacation in Yala National Park when the tsunami crashed onto the Sri Lankan coast. Sonali was the only member of her family who survived the devastation of that day.

Wave is her painful, poignant memoir, a story of great love and horrific loss. It takes her six months to return to the spot where the wave swept away the five most important people in her life, two years to return to England, almost four years to return to her empty home in London.

She tries to move on, taking a position as a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York City and traveling with friends, but the weight of her loss stays with her always. She relives thousands of moments of her past life with a husband and two children, constantly reminding herself that they are dead in an effort to stop herself from thinking they are alive, always worried that she might forget the minutiae of their lives together, and racked with guilt that she was unable to save them.

So often we forget about the very individual impact of these catastrophic events. This memoir is difficult to read in its very personal rawness, a reminder of how tenuous life can be and how powerless we are in the face of nature's power.