I commented earlier about how good the bitumen roads are in this country compared with the one just to its north. But once you go off-piste they rapidly turn to shit. I would suggest they borrow India’s grader but I don’t think they have one either. In fact that’s something all of the safari parks we’ve been to in Nepal, India and here have in common apart from a scarcity of exotic animals – crap access roads. I guess it all adds to the experience.
And here’s a suggestion for any future visits to a safari park, you dear reader may be contemplating. Don’t take a guide who’s a bird watcher because while I’m on the lookout for leopards, he’s stopping the vehicle for every peacock and parrot. We have a plethora of peacocks and parrots where we live but as far as I am aware, there are no leopards roaming wild in Brisbane.
We set off on our first Sri Lankan safari and it was like mobilising for D-Day as once we got out into the wilds there were more Jeeps than trees. If you’ve seen a flight map of the USA or Western Europe showing all of the planes in the air at any particular point in time, that’s what a satellite picture of this place would have looked like. So you wouldn’t be surprised if skittish wild animals stayed well away from the roads. A few strategically placed elephants and the occasional mongoose was about it, apart from the above-mentioned birds. The closest we got to a leopard was a small ginger and white kitten sitting on the steps outside the park registration office where our guide was probably signing a disclaimer on our behalf absolving the park of responsibility should we be eaten by a mongoose.
The drivers, or many of them, keep contact with each other so that if someone spots something interesting like a sloth bear (I don’t know what this is because I’ve never seen one but they apparently reside here) or a leopard, Jeeps from all points of the compass descend on that spot like seagulls on a chip. These guys don’t miss a thing. It’s like they have lizard eyes. You wonder if they can see through your clothes. And so it was on our second safari that day. We drove back and forth on the same road six times because there had been a rumoured leopard siting along with leopard prints (feet not clothing) in the mud. There wasn’t while we were there. Then word came through that one had been seen somewhere else so we were hell-for-leather through the jungle to another cluster of Jeeps and people all looking at a tree about 100m away. The CB and others said they saw it but I didn’t so like lower court judges in the USA I’m going to go against overwhelming evidence to the contrary and deny the majority.
On the way out of the park, the call came through again. We rushed to an intersection of three roads with a tree in the middle of said intersection and sitting next to the tree was the smuggest looking leopard you’ll ever see. It casually considered it’s frantically snapping audience then with a look of disdain turned and strolled off down the road as cool as a cool cat could be, like Josh Homme…..wearing his wife’s underwear. But we had finally seen a big cat after three countries and four safaris.