#yalanationalpark #safarisrilanka #leopardsafari

Yala National Park in Sri Lanka is the second largest safari park in the country.....but the most popular. On the South Coast, a 2.5 hour drive from Welligama it offers the highest density of leopards anywhere in the world.

I was contemplating whether to visit other national parks like Udawalawe because of rumours of Yala being really busy. Whilst Udawalawe may have far more elephants, I hadn't seen a leopard in a number of years so Yala it was. I thought it would be interesting to see whether going early on a Monday morning (instead of the weekend) would mean that it was less crowded....

At 978.8 square kilometres, it's rather large. Yala is split into 5 blocks, with block 1 being the most popular. In fact, the website encourages you to visit other blocks, but the problem is that Block 1 is the easiest to get to! Given the half day of travel needed to get there and back, I took my chances with block 1.

Unfortunately, whilst we searched for leopards for a few hours, we didn't see any. In fact, I missed a leopard sighting by about 10 minutes when I entered which was incredibly frustrating considering that I usually try to get to places for open. If you want to see leopards, the best time is early morning or late evening.

I hired a safari jeep for myself (half day) which, whilst not cheap, does mean that you can have the flexibility of moving on to search for different wildlife, or stay and watch certain animals, as I did so with a few elephants.

There are loads of peacocks, wild pigs, deer and other wildlife in Yala National Park, though the main attraction is clearly the leopards. Towards the end of the half day, a report came through on the radio that a female leopards and 3 cubs had been spotted near a watering hole. The ensuing 20 minutes was complete chaos. This was what people meant when they said Yala was busy! It seemed like every jeep in Block 1 was racing to get to the spot, overtaking each other and driving pretty darn fast.

When we got there.....the leopards had left. No luck.

Overall, I think it would be better to stay at a hotel near the safari park. It would mean that you can be there when it opens (I left before 5am and by the time I got to the gates there were already 10 jeeps there). You can't complain about not seeing animals, after all they are wild and that's the luck of the draw. Although if I had to criticise, they need to do something about the congestion. Even if we had seen a leopard, it would have been really hard to see it or get a good vantage point because of the amount of jeeps. I guess the rumours were true!

I enjoyed it though. $100 for the day isn't the cheapest, but if you share a jeep and stay closer to the park, that will bring the costs down significantly. Plus, if you haven't been on safari before, it's something you'll have to do whilst in Sri Lanka.

Shot on:

- GoPro Hero 9 Black (with media mod)
- Sony RX10 IV

0:00 - Intro
1:04 - Wild Pigs
1:37 - Peacocks
2:23 - Missed a Leopard
2:57 - Block 1 - Yala National Park
4:21 - Elephants
7:10 - A Leopard has been spotted!
10:37 - Is Yala too crowded?

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