Yala National Park! - Ruby

Wind was blowing in my hair, I could just see the tip of the sun rising from behind the mountains. The roaring sound of the jeep echoed off in the distance as it stumbled along the highway. Then, right up ahead of us I could see the long line of jeeps, filled with tourists who were waiting to buy their tickets. I watched their faces, surprised, confused and angry as we sped past them to the front and right through the entry way. We were smart enough to buy tickets before hand!

I looked behind our jeep and saw another line of jeeps trailing behind us, we couldn’t stop at all unless we wanted to start a massive traffic jam! I started looking around myself hoping to see any signs of life or any rustles in the bushes. Up ahead of us, some of the jeeps had huddled in a small corner and tourists were taking photos of something lying on the grassy floor. I gasped, it was a dead leopard!

We were at the Yala National Park, Hazel, Mila, Wendy and me (Ruby), this national park is famous for being the best one in all of Sri Lanka, full of leopards, buffalo, birds, wild pigs, crocodiles, elephants and so many more wonderful creatures! But there are still very limited numbers of leopards that live here and it was very hard for the jeep drivers to see one dead. All the drivers know each leopard by name and can tell who is who, so when they saw this dead baby they knew who its mother was, what its name is and how long it lived for! They called the national parks vet who would come and see what killed this leopard.

With broken hearts, we moved on hoping to see some live animals. Luckily for us, we saw many other amazing animals, like buffalos swimming in a large lake, keeping very still while birds landed on their backs! We saw peacocks with their tails put out and peahens following them around. We also saw many crocodiles hanging around bodies of water. And elephants walking through the grassy lands.

Sadly, we did see another dead animal, an elephant. It was lying on the grass next to the pool of water that was home to two crocodiles. Our driver informed us that the elephant would have died in a fight with another elephant and now the crocodiles are eating it little by little. The elephant looked as it is had been torn at and parts of its skin were gone revealing the inside of its mouth. This dead creature really stank so we couldn’t stay there for that long.

On the way out of the national park, we saw a large leopard who was lying down underneath a tree, he was a male and was one of the biggest leopards that they have there! He was super far away and you could only just make out the outline of his body!

We had such a great time in the Yala National Park and I would definitely recommend it if you ever come to Sri Lanka!

See you next time! : )