Leopard at Yala National Park

Jaya knocks on our door at 4.30am and by 5 we're in the jeep with Sureya (we think) or elephant boy as he is introduced to us. We head to the park and almost immediately the phone rings .. a leopard has been spotted. We head to the spot and see her after a little wait. She's hunting and pays no attention to us. Unfortunately before long there are loads of jeeps there. The animals don't seem bothered at all but it's not so enjoyable for us. We see her a few more times but she doesn't manage to make a kill so slopes off into the bush.

Almost immediately we are rushing to another spot and arrive to see a beautiful male leopard walking on some rocks. He's quite close but soon goes out of view. It's really difficult to get pictures of them. By the time you stop and focus, they're gone. We've been really lucky as our guide tells us he didn't see any yesterday. We go to the beach for a breakfast of string hoppers, dahl and coconut sambol. After a walk on the beach we head out again and see loads of other great stuff including elephants, one a particularly large impressive male with tusks, both spotted and sambur deer, a few mongeese, loads of wild boar, wild and water buffalo, jackels, crocs,much by lots of birds including eagles, huge monitor lizards and a snake.

We have lunch by the river and take a quick dip. We are assured the crocs only habitate lakes here and not rivers ... there's a small child swimming nearby so hopefully he'll be enough for any passing crocs! Lunch consists of four veggie curries with rice and popodums and is lovely although we have to fight off the red faced macaques.

After lunch we head out again and see more deer, birds, elephants etc then suddenly our guide sees some leopard prints by the roadside and before you know it he spots a male leopard very close by, slipping in and out of view ... we're the only jeep here at this time and its amazing. He makes one call and another jeep arrives, driving slowly so as not to disturb the leopard. Then a few others come tearing in and the leopard retreats. Our guide plays it well and says he's gone so all but us and one other jeep remain. Our guide says the leopard wants to cross the road so will be back. We wait and are not disappointed. He doesn't cross the road in the end, probably because we are there, but we get a couple of great views.  Of course, the leopard has to be blipfoto today although we took many so as blip have started to allow extra pics (100 per year) we've added a few to this entry although will only do so only special days.

A great day's safari. We go back tired but happy and have an Arrack with Jaya before bed.