Fab Fun Feb

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

By jeep and by tuk tuk through Sri Lanka - A traveller's vignette #1 : safari jam.

Think 'safari', and images come to mind of crossing the sweeping plains of the Serengeti in a battered Land Rover while herds of zebra and wildebeest swarm past, all on the lookout for a prowling lioness or cheetah.

I knew, of course, when we signed up for a 'safari adventure' in Sri Lanka that the reality would be very different from my TV and movie-inspired pastiche images. What exactly it would encompass, I didn't know, but Born Free, it was clearly not going to be. Our driver collected us from our hotel at 05:30, not in a Land Rover, but a Jeep. Well, close enough to a Land Rover, but rather more comfortable, at least based on my admittedly limited experience of the battered beasts. As we drove through town toward the Yala National Park on the south coast where we would begin our search for exotic animals, we passed a great many similar vehicles parked outside other hotels and I knew then that this not going to be a solitary expedition. At the park entrance the truth of the matter became very clear - there would be no less than 125 vehicles on the safari today, and I wondered just how many animals we would actually see, with a not-so-small army of off-road vehicles thundering across the landscape.

Well, let me clarify that 'off road' statement a little. None of the vehicles would actually go off road today. We stayed on gravel roads for the duration of the half-day safari, which is of course, perfectly understandable. The film and TV-based images of bashing your way through the jungle or of losing your vehicle to quicksand or a charging bull elephant is a very, very long way from reality.

Speaking of elephants, we saw our first wild elephant just inside the park boundary before even leaving the bitumen. This was quite exciting, because we all thought that if we'd spotted one already before even getting properly into the park, then how many would we see throughout the whole safari? To save you, dear reader, the bother and possible anxiety of waiting for an answer to that question, I'll tell you straight up; that was to be the only elephant sighting of the day. Elephants were not the main quarry however, and are readily seen through many parts of the country anyway. Sri Lanka is famous not just for its elephants of course, but also for its leopards, which are the largest on the planet, being at the top of the food chain here. Despite having no predators, they are very shy and wary of humans. Combined with their stealth and camouflage, this makes them very difficult to spot, but the travel guides assured us that the Yala National Park would give us our best chance of sighting one.

With all vehicles dispersing along the many various tracks once we were under way, the crowd of Jeeps was not as bad as I had feared, and the list of animals and birds seen by us grew rapidly. There were crocodiles aplenty, along with water buffalo, deer, wild boar, mongoose, eagles, peacocks, giant land monitors and a staggering array of smaller birds including stunning kingfishers and parrots.

There were six of us in our Jeep: myself, Mrs MLCMM, our eldest son Christopher and his wife Tash, our driver and our park guide, so there were plenty of eyes being kept peeled for any sign of the elusive leopard. Well, as it turns out, all of the drivers and guides keep in constant contact via mobile phone, so there were far more eyes than just ours on the lookout. And so it transpired that it wasn't too long before word got out that a leopard had in fact been seen, and so began what can only be described as a safari traffic jam. If you can imagine over a hundred 4WDs converging on one remote spot via narrow, gravel roads you might begin to appreciate the strangeness of the situation. A Born Free moment it was not. Instead we sat in a queue for an hour, inching our way towards a stand of trees in which, we were told, a leopard was sleeping, apparently oblivious to the crush of humanity clamouring to catch a glimpse of it.

Park guides became point duty policemen, ensuring that vehicles remained only briefly at the allotted spot from where you could allegedly see the sleeping cat, and also ensuring that nobody left their vehicles. As our turn finally came, the guide urgently pointed us toward the appropriate point in the appropriate tree. There! He explained it was the second, darker tree, right hand side of the left hand bigger branch, lower crook. Huh? He even used our cameras to photograph the relevant spot but we saw nothing at all. Frustrated, we had to leave, but at least confident we had bagged the cat somewhere in one of the many photos we had taken, although also wondering if it would later turn out to be a pile of vaguely leopard-like rags planted there by someone.

After a breakfast break on the beach we returned the same way, the guide having taken pity on us and confirming that the leopard was in fact still there. By now water buffalo and crocodiles were beginning to seem a little passé, so another chance at spotting the leopard was welcome. Approaching from the other direction we were assured it would be easier to see, but again, we saw only a tangle of branches and leaves. Whoever it was that spotted the elusive cat had a magnificent set of eyes, I thought, or perhaps an overactive imagination. However, as we drove away, I studied the photos again a little more carefully, and sure enough there it was; in the crook of a branch where the guide had been pointing was the undeniable, sleeping form of a leopard. Having now seen it, it stood out clear as day. Well, anyway, I can at least say we saw it; it just didn't quite register at the time.

In fact, that was not to be the end of our leopard encounters. A little while later we had stopped to watch some wild boar who were off in the distance and looking agitated. The guide informed us their behaviour was indicative of a leopard in the area and on the prowl. What happened next was particularly confusing, but he suddenly claimed to have briefly seen the leopard, after which he told the driver to drive in the opposite direction and turn onto a side road where we stopped. Utterly confused as to why we had driven there I was watching the road ahead of us when suddenly everyone let out a gasp of astonishment followed by exclamations of 'Wow!' and 'Oh my God!' and 'Incredible! That was worth the whole trip!' ... somehow, despite watching the precisely the same stretch of road as everyone else, I must have blinked at the wrong moment and missed a leopard dart across right in front of us.

Well, that's the way it goes sometimes. Blink, and you risk missing one of life's truly magical moments.

The Buddhist/Hindu/Christo/Islamic Gods that favour Sri Lanka do, however, sometimes look after those of us who stupidly blink at the wrong times, and so were rewarded with an end-of-safari consolation prize of a young family of wild boar circling our Jeep in alarming cuteness, looking for freebie handouts right at the end of our adventure. Despite our lack of food to give them they graciously mooched around posing for photos for a time before trotting off to find comestibles elsewhere.

Trotting. Now there's something I ought to try sometime. Unlike the leopard that zoomed across our path today, there has been no running for me in Sri Lanka. But I have seen a leopard in the wild. Sort of.

The sleeping leopard (lower right).