Uda Welawe and the Elephants

After our whale watching adventure we wanted to travel straight to our next destination, the Uda Welawe national park, famed for its elephants, amongst other animals!
Where in the UK the day to day transport is mainly cars, in Sri Lanka it's all about the buses. We flagged one down from the side of the road, climb into it and before you're even in fully it's pulled away, fast. They're super cheap (about £1.60 for both of us for an 80 mile journey) so every bus is 99% local, 1% tourist.
To understand what happened next I'll give you an idea of the way they work. Most buses are fairly old and have a door at the front and back, with a bag store overhead (little) and next to the driver (a bit larger but only for a few bags). They have a central walkway and rows of seats 4-5 across. Fixed into the overhead locker throughout the bus are MASSIVE speakers blaring the latest Sri Lankan/bangra tunes at a high volume, muted a little by the open windows providing a very much needed breeze (seriously, it's so hot I've now sweated from places I didn't even know I had). Both buses we took in this journey were packed, but thankfully we had seats.
Ok so back to the bus in Mirissa. As we tried to take our bags off to put in the store by the driver the bus pulled away, throwing both of us off balance. At the same time half a dozen girls and a few middle aged ladies got up to get off at the next stop a few hundred metres away. As we tried to regain our balance and take our bags off I felt a hand go into my pocket and my wallet come out. I'm not stupid enough to leave much in it, but there was still about £25 in it, so to put it plainly I blocked their way off the bus and shouted in their face, making a huge scene - Beth tells me I just lost it at them - but after a very intense minute my wallet 'magically' appeared on the floor, including its contents.
We got ourselves seated and couldn't believe that had just happened within 30 seconds of our first bus experience! It was only then that I realised the Lonely planet guidebook we have is missing information on the etiquette for fighting a girl when she steals your stuff, but thankfully it didn't get that far.
Much more warily we made our change to another bus in a town called Matara and that was the second of two parts of our journey that took us to a town called Embilipitiya. It was a hot and sticky 3 hours from end to end (although we loved interacting with the locals, waving at school kids and best of all the cheesy SL-pop blaring out). I can't explain enough just how rough the journey was, with windy downhill sections taken at 50mph by the bus driver, sometimes overtaking lorries etc on the wrong side of the road with a blind bend... we'd chosen seats at the back which may have made this worse as speed bumps were ignored and as such we were thrown into the air at each one (the locals enjoyed Beth squealing at this)!
After a short walk from the bus station we arrived at our hotel and were greeted by the most friendly and welcoming person we have met in Sri Lanka, a young man called Tilly. With Beth's name up on the wall with a GB flat to welcome us, we then sat under a fan as he brought us iced pineapple smoothies and arranged our safari for the next day, happily chatting the whole time. He then explained he was upgrading us from our basic fan and cold water room to a superior air con and hot water room, free of charge so we were already beginning to forget the stress of the bus journeys. Our mood was uplifted further by a swim in their pool, all to ourselves as the hotel wasn't busy. Overall it was definitely the best accommodation we've had so far, especially so because of Tilly who couldn't do enough for us.
The 4.45 alarm to wake us this morning was not fun, but we had to leave the hotel at 5.15 to go by 4x4 to Uda Welawe and be at the gate for the opening at 6. We shared the vehicle with a lovely French couple (also guests at our hotel) and our driver guide. Of course it was still dark when we left but as we arrived at the gates the sun rose gently into the sky, bringing the park to life. Within the first 10 minutes we'd seen a male peacock perched atop a tree and then suddenly the car grinds to a halt as there were wild Asian elephants right next to the path, happily grazing on the lush vegetation the park is covered in (it's rained every afternoon there for a few weeks). As we found out throughout our morning safari many times, the female elephants and young stay together but males separate and are solitary, except when mating. During the morning we saw well in excess of 40 elephants including two new born babies and half a dozen toddlers, and all were so curious of our vehicle and the others in the park, often walking close to and around the vehicle which gave us unrivalled views of them. They truly are majestic creatures, much smaller than African elephants and only 8% have tusks, meaning the Asian elephants are similar but certainly different.
We also experienced innumerable peacocks with a male displaying its mesmerising feathers, monkeys playing in a tree, a variety of colourful birds flying to and fro and we also witnessed a Sea Eagle having it's breakfast (sorry to the poor stork). Add to that water buffalo, spotted deer (including 'bambi'!), chameleon and more! The park really is a wonderful place to experience animals in the wild and in the 3 hours we safaried there was only 5 minutes where we saw no animals.
Sri Lanka is famous for its wild leopard population, with the largest number available to be seen in another national park called Yala. Since we arrived we spoke with a number of guides, travellers and locals who all said the same about Yala. Everyone goes to see the leopards making it very busy and results in the jeeps racing each other to a location if one driver spots one. It's also much busier than Uda Welaye, so despite the reduced possibility of seeing a leopard at UW we chose there instead. Now we've visited, and ultimately we didn't see a leopard, we are still so glad of our choice as UW had a calmer feel about it and because of the environment being different we also experienced more diverse wildlife.
Before returning to our hotel we stopped at Elephant Transit House, home to about 80 orphaned and disabled elephants and while they receive some government funding they run mainly on entrance fees (£4.80 for both of us) and donations. As the name suggests it's only intended to rehabilitate the animals before returning them to the wild. As of 2015 they'd returned 100 and 13 of these had their own calves, showing the real value in the work they do there. We arrived at 9am just in time for them to be fed, and we saw more elephants in one place than we have ever seen before or could have imagined! Amongst them were playful babies, an elephant with a crippled leg and another who is missing one leg, but he has a prosthetic. As we found out in their information centre most trouble for Sri Lankan elephants is from human-elephant conflict, emphasising the need for the home to keep contact with humans as low as possible. If you're interested in the home more then Animal Planet made a documentary about it so just give it a Google search!
Following another refreshing swim in the hotel pool we packed up again and headed off to our next destination up in the hill country - Ella! You might be surprised to hear we opted for a taxi instead of 3 bus journeys...

PhilRead more