Minneriya

I had planned to go all out yesterday so I could get the chance to sleep in and rest for half the day today. Only one thing was in the itinerary today and that is going for an elephant safari in Minneriya National Park, Sri Lanka was famous for its elephants afterall. Lasantha hooked me up with one of his pals, Sanji. I was able to get a private tour for the same price as a public one. It was time to finally put the edible chocolate I got from Thailand to good use. I sat in front of Sanji's jeep and ate them on the way to buy tickets. Right after buying the tickets, we were off to the jungle. I really liked Minneriya because it was literally empty as was most of the places I've visited so far but partly because everyone was in Habarana Eco-Park where most of the elephants were migrating through at the moment but I had wanted to see Minneriya for myself since it was a national park and quite frakly, I wasn't disappointed as it had this giant lake and there were hundreds of white birds hanging about, it was surrounded by mountains as well and I got to see monkeys and an eagle but most of all, I got to see tons of elephants so I was a happy kid. I got pretty good photos despite my phone not having any optical zooms. There were even some really close encounters such as when an elephant emerged from the jungle and we stared at each other for such a long time. It felt like it was staring into my soul. One other elephant got a bit territorial and made some charges at us. There were some herds all walking in a line and baby elephants as well, I was very satisfied with how the day played out so I thanked Sanji and asked him to take me to Habaran Eco-park the next day. He asked me to drink some alcohol while going for it but I told him I prefer weed and he said he could get some for me so I was stoked.

Back at the homestay, I got to experience another black out while I was busy answering all these messages that I kept getting from those Sri Lankan girls the other day, I kinda regretted giving them my Whatsapp a number at this point.Read more