Yala National Park

Yala National Park is the most visited and second largest national park in Sri Lanka. The park consists of five blocks, two of which are now open to the public, and also adjoining parks. The blocks have individual names such as, Ruhuna National Park(block 1) and Kumana National Park or 'Yala East' for the adjoining area. It is situated in the southeast region of the country, and lies in Southern Province and Uva Province. The park covers 979 square kilometres (378 sq mi) and is located about 300 kilometres (190 mi) from Colombo. Yala was designated as a wildlife sanctuary in 1900, and, along with Wilpattu was one of the first two national parks in Sri Lanka, having been designated in 1938. The park is best known for its variety of wild animals. It is important for the conservation of Sri Lankan elephants, Sri Lankan leopards and aquatic birds.

When we heard that there was a place in Sri Lanka that had the best chance of anywhere in the world to spot a Leopard in the wild, we knew that we had to go there.

Yala National Park is located on the coast of Southern Sri Lanka.  It is a nature reserve covering 126,800 hectares of land.

Where is Yala?

Tissahamaran commonly known as Tissa is an excellent place to arrange a safari to Yala. Located on Sri Lanka’s South Eastern Coast it is a stunning setting of dry lands, bush and beaches.

We stayed at the friendly Traveller’s Home and instantly took a liking to Ebert and his family.   He is new to the Internet and we helped him set up his establishment on TripAdvisor.  He was happy to find out that someone had already submitted him and gave him a great review.

He deserves it.  Ebert was very fair and honest.  We arranged our safari through him and he came up with a price comparable to the guide book.  Plus his service was second to none and he made sure to find other people to go with us to share the cost.

Sharing the Cost

We ended up splitting our safari between 5 people and had excellent company to boot!

Our Yala Safari started at 1:30 pm.  Ebert told us that the best chance to see leopards was near sunset, and we listened.

We all met at Traveller’s Home and were on our way by 2:00 pm.

Nalin, our driver was a young chap and very good at his job.   The park is about a 45 minute drive from Tissa and the breeze felt good as we sat in the back of the safari jeep getting to know one another.

After a quick stop at the free museum while Nalin signed us in, we were off in search of a Leopard.

It was still early in the day so we had lots of time before any leopard would be climbing out of the trees from their slumber, so we set out to look at the other wildlife inhabiting Yala.

Other wildlife in Yala National Park

It wasn’t long until we spotted elephants, jackals, peacocks and monitor lizards,crocodiles, eagles, spoonbills, storks and wild boars.

We were all feeling pretty satisfied and it wasn’t even an hour into our trip.

Nalin drove away from the other jeeps in the park and we felt like we had the land to ourselves for a while.

That is for a while.

As time went on, more and more jeeps came into the park.  We were happy that we came earlier than other groups because we managed to have at least some time to ourselves.

We didn’t really notice just how many of us there were until we came across our Leopard.

We came around a corner and spotted at least 10 jeeps in a cluster.  We knew that there must be a leopard in view to make everyone stop like that and sure enough, across a small lake, we could see a tail hanging from the tree.

We joked that the park rangers probably put it there to make tourists happy.