Willpatu National Park

Today we visited one of the oldest and biggest National Parks in Sri Lanka, Willpatu National Park. You're not allowed to walk in this park, so you need to visit with a jeep (so we are told)...which is what we did. The forest is mixed and varied with small lakes around. We saw lots of birds, including beautiful kingfishers and hornbills, spotted deer, crocodiles, turtles. After a few hours our driver went a little crazy and sped to another park of the park, so we assumed there was a sighting of something special. We arrive to masses of jeeps, we had no idea where they had all come from and find that we are all waiting to see a leopard who is sleeping or laying about 15m away. It was too far to get a decent photo with our phones, but pretty amazing anyway (despite it being zoo like with the mass of jeeps with people trying to see the elusive leopard). However our treat was to come, as we were driving to leave the park (which takes about an hour in itself) we by total luck stumbled upon a leopard doing a poo on the side of the road and it walked away, across the road, just metres away from our eyes! This was quite an amazing and special moment.Read more