Friday 9th August
Today, we were booked in with Dinesh (Mowgli Safaris), a 3rd generation 17 year veteran safari guide in Yala National Park.
We had booked a full day safari, as several Trip Advisor reviews had made mention of the fact that a full day safari gives you a much better chance at seeing the variety of wildlife in the park.
And this proved very much to be the case.
Dinesh explained his history, how his father and grandfather had been safari operators before him, and how he had learned the lifestyle from quite a young age.
He told us that many of the other tour operators are former fisherman, tuk-tuk drivers, cleaners, and whatnot, who all jumped on the bandwagon after the civil war ended in 2009, and tourism exploded.
A lot of those operators were ferrying clients who had only booked half day (or worse, 3 hour) tours, and they would quite often tear off from one animal sighting in search of the next, simply because there wasn’t much time to spare. Particularly when you factored in that there was a 20 minute drive to get from Tissa to the park gate, and the same again on the way out. Deduct that from your 3 hour tour, and you’ve only got 2 hours and change to see what the park has to offer.
His background as an experienced tour guide was evidenced by several different events through the day.
On a couple of occasions, we would be bouncing along in the 4WD, and suddenly, he would slam on the brakes, reverse up 10 metres or so, and then point out a little 20 cm long chameleon sitting on the branch of a tree! And it would be disguised, too! How he could spot them from a moving vehicle was beyond me!
Also, when it comes to leopard sightings, they say that if you see a leopard, you’re really lucky, as they are such elusive creatures.
Under Dinesh’s guidance, we saw 5 sightings in total, of 3 different leopards!
And quite often, Dinesh would find a leopard, and it would be surrounded by tour trucks, and he would drive right on by, turn a corner and park the car.
And there’d be nothing there to see.
And we’d ask “Why are we here?”
And he’d say “Just wait a minute. That leopard will come walking along this path right here”, and he’d point it out.
And sure enough, within a minute, the leopard would come strolling by, and the other tour trucks would all arrive, and we’d be in prime position with the best view.
He also mentioned that the operators running 3 and 5 hour tours will spend all their time trying to find the “big ticket items”…. the leopards, the elephants, and so on.
While he made an effort to point out even the small creatures, which were just as fascinating.
I could not fault him for anything. We had a great day, saw everything we expected to see (except elephants, which as Dinesh explained, had mostly moved quite a way to the north-east due to the shortage of rainfall), and had a fun, knowledgeable guide to show us what Yala National Park had to offer. I could not recommend his services highly enough to anyone considering a tour.
