One of the many beauties we found of Bera in India’s Rajasthan was its relative inaccessibility.  You have to make a real effort to get there, there is a cost involved, and once there, there is a restriction on the number of vehicles allowed in the vicinity at any one time; from memory it is around a dozen, and the area is vast.  The vehicles used are quiet, too.

Wilpattu National Park in Sri Lanka is also vast so it is possible to find solitude and just enjoy beautiful nature, but it is also highly accessible and there is no meaningful limit on the number of vehicles allowed entry.  Indeed, you can bring your own vehicle so long as it is four wheel drive with locking differentials and has sand tyres fitted, the only caveat being you have to take a guide in the front passenger seat for safety and to ensure park rules are followed.  Much has been written in the local press – and even made the international press – about queues of vehicles hounding one poor animal, usually the sought-after leopard.  I saw an article about Yala National Park that showed seventy vehicles all jostling for position around a leopard and her cub.  A few years back, the authorities did limit the number of vehicles to both parks and even switched off the cellular towers in the few areas that a signal was available, but under tourism industry pressure it has regressed to how it was; there is a patchy signal around the edges of Wilpattu though thankfully none when properly in the park, but far too many vehicles.  I’d much rather have had to book and wait for my turn.

From what we saw, most folk go with the sole purpose of seeing a leopard, and the result is a cacophony of diesel-engined vehicles hauling themselves noisily along sandy tracks, drivers eagerly looking for another vehicle that looks like it is on to something and then racing in to position to join it.  In no time flat, you can go from total silence bar birdsong to being surrounded by a dozen vehicles, each tunelessly idling so they’d be ready to move if they needed to, jockeying for position to give their punter the best view and filling the air with diesel fumes.  It is unfair on those like Ranil and me who wish to simply appreciate nature – and much more importantly, it is the unfair on the wildlife, too.  Soon after the other drivers realise that in fact you are patiently waiting to photograph a bird or something else, they’ll be off unless also carrying wildlife photographers – and in several cases squeeeeeeezing between our vehicle and the subject we were shooting.

The weekend was a privilege, we saw some amazing things, had the chance to put technical and artistic photography skills to the test and enjoyed periods of blissful isolation in a stunning landscape – but all too often it would be spoiled before its time.    Clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter.  Contrast that with the birdsong in this smartphone video that I shot when we found a peaceful place to be.

Steve