November definitely is not the best month to visit The Teardrop of India. The seasons on the island are determined by two monsoons: Yala and Maha. Yala a south west wind brings humidity on the western and southern coast and keeps eastern and northern part relatively dry and sunny in the period of April through October. On the other side Maha is active from October to February allowing northern and eastern provinces to enjoy rain. Of course with weather nothing is as simple and black and white. All in all the months of October and November are quite chaotic and brings a lot of rain water across the whole island. The weather is difficult to predict but very often the rains come in the afternoon and normally do not last long.

Mahinda who visited Sri Lanka in the beginning of November has been a little disappointed with those climate irregularities. He has installed a number of fancy weather applications on his iPhone (Storm Radar or NOAA Weather Radar just to name a few) as well as added the Sri Lanka Department of Meteorology to his follow up Fb sites. The study of the weather information has been his main breakfast activity. And lunch and dinner as well.

The planning of daily activity has been heavily dependent on the wether forecast. Despite the fact that the forecast longer than 6 hours were much less reliable Mahinda decided to book his long waited safari to the famous Yala National Park (90$ two persons in a private jeep). He already did a safari a couple of months ago in the famous Udawalawe park ( some reflections on this experience here) but Yala was by far more famous. Yala is populated with a huge (50) number of leopards. Yala has a strong representation of elephants. Yala does care about animals.

Mahinda was so exited with the idea of meeting leopard that he couldn’t sleep. A very bad idea as he had to get up early enough to start the safari at 4:30am. The jeep was already waiting in his guesthouse at the paddy fields of Tissamahawara. It was so dark that Mahinda did not even see that the rice fields were not at all green but muddy and full of brown water. November is the the time when the rice fields are being prepared to the new vegetation season and the plants are not planted yet. As from December the situation will be much more romantic.

The ride to the Yala gate takes more or less half an hour. Mahinda was really grateful he had been clever enough to accept the idea of putting on a black hoodie. Except for the fact he was looking like a batman the cool breeze was bearable. Sure, the jeep was open and the driver has already started his rally. The last few kilometers went through the semi-park area. A number of signs intended to inform visitors they were entering the kingdom of animals where their rights and wellbeing are expected to be respected. “Slow, slow, slow!” – straightforward message to jeep drivers. The message has been reinforced by frequent – every 100 meters – speed ramps. Should has Mahinda noticed the first weak signals already? The driver seemed excited and somehow motivated to arrive at the gate as soon as possible. He has been speeding up only to violently push the breaks just ahead of the ramp. Every 100 meters. For 15 minutes or so. Finally, they got to the gate.

“Sir, we are the fifth!” the driver announced proudly. Indeed, Mahinda was privileged to wait for another half an hour sitting in the jeep in the front of a long queue before the gate would open. At 6am, not earlier.

The first glimpses of dawn started to appear. Other visitors bravely disembarked their vehicles. Some started to take photo, others tried some efforts with selfies (Chinese?), some looked for private moments in the nearby bushes. The queue has already reached a number of 40 cars. “Is it really a low season?” Mahinda thought to himself. Just couple days ago the Yala Park was reopened after its regular annual break.

The regular morning half day safari assumes spending 6 hours inside the park. Before 12pm the jeeps must leave the park premises, otherwise they are penalized.

During first hour Mahinda has been very much fascinated seeing any signs of the wildlife. Mainly there were little herds of deers, colorful birds, some river buffaloes seen from the distance, sleepy crocodiles with open jaws and lazy monitor lizards passing the road.

Suddenly Mahinda noticed that his jeep drives rather fast considering the quality of the road. They were not alone and other vehicles were moving with he same fast pace. Despite Mahinda was jumping and hanging like a monkey he thought this was the standard. But why to be so in a hurry? Fortunately Mahinda did not take his breakfast yet otherwise the situation might has turned to much more serious. Finally he decided to react and asked the driver to slow down. “But, Sir, leopard is there. We hurry we see and you are happy. Sir, you are happy I am happy. No hurry and leopard not waiting. No happy” the driver replied with some excitement. Five minutes later they arrived. There were already a number of other jeeps stacking around a tree completely blocking the road.

Everyone tried to find the best view position so constantly they were moving few meters ahead, few backwards. The drivers were simply mad trying to satisfy their customers and pointing with their fingers at leopard hidden somewhere in the tree. Mahinda was fortunate enough to take a glimpse of the cat just at the moment when it was jumping down from the tree. His driver was definitely unhappy as his client could not take a picture of the cat.

The rally repeated three times more. Every time when a jeep sees a leopard the diver calls others and let them know. The rally starts to get the best view. The customers like crazy monkeys are hanging on the car’s handles and do their best to stay within the vehicle. For sure there is no speed limit in the park. Who cares? Something like 50 jeeps (and more than 100 in high season) drive like crazy with their engines roaring like jumbo jets not giving a shit to animals. Good that monitor lizards do not pass the road on that time. They go with such a speed for more than 20 minutes just to arrive to the place where they can see the shadow of leopard.

After the third rally Mahinda was fed up. “What about elephants? May we look for them, gently?” he asked the driver. “Now, no much elephants. They moved away, inside the park. Looking for food”. Mahinda reflected that at least those giant mammals were intelligent enough to walk away from this crazy place where traffic was comparable with the rush hours in any town.

When safari was over Mahinda was a bit confused. He still remembered his experience with Udawalawe park. Ok, that had been his first experience with safari in Sri Lanka so his enthusiasm had been much bigger. However, in Udawalawe there was a feeling of greater respect to animals. The jeeps were moving in much more moderate speed and the park was not so visibly jammed with vehicles. And elephants. There were many, many elephants everywhere. Mahinda was not even exited seeing a one in the bushes. He had so many occasions to see the families of elephants approaching the cars, touching sometimes the vehicles with their long noses. Or even small herds of the animals taking the bath in the lake. Nobody was interested in looking for leopard.

Yala National Park is definitely focused on commercial activity. All signs advertising how animals are important, that they are the true owners of the jungle, that visitors should care and respect their right are simple marketing bullshit.

Mahinda finally understood why the park needs its annual 2 months break. The animals needs to recover from jeeps otherwise they would go crazy. And from the first of November they are again ready to be wild enough to attract new hordes of tourists.