Rennie will post shortly about our Christmas holiday more widely, but in the mean time I will make four posts related to visiting Yala National Park on Christmas and Boxing Days; A thousand square Kilometres of protected nature and home to a wide range of wildlife including sixty leopards.

It was a case of sixth and seventh time lucky for proper leopard sightings up-close in lighting condusive to showing these magnificent animals in all their spleandour. Following these four safaris in India’s Rajasthan and this one in Sri Lanka’s Wilpattu we undertook an all-day safari on 25th (I think the last time I got up at 04:20am on Christmas day was as a young and excited child checking if Santa had visited!) and another for the afternoon of 26th. On both occasions we experienced vast Yala in the almost total absence of others; 9 jeeps on the first day and 18 on the second (it being a Saturday), versus commonly 100 and some times up to 200 at this time of year. Given the dangerous animals and that Yala is a protected reserve, exploring on foot is strictly prohibited and alighting from vehicles only permitted in the designated area for lunch and loo.

This story starts on 25th when we came across a mature male leopard relaxing on a rock before dinner – which was likely going to be one of the wild pigs drinking at the water’s edge beneath the rock. Not only was this sighting in the golden hour of soft, warm light just before sunset but the sun was directly behind me; perfect. Confirmed on Google Maps, the distance was barely 25 metres, too. We left the park realising how fortunate we were to experience this special occasion but little did we know that this was only the warm-up for what was going to happen the following day.

Steve