Udawalawe
Udawalawe National Park, Sri Lanka
After a meandering drive through rice paddies we break from the highway and arrive at our base camp, Kottawatta Village. We waste away the afternoon lazing under palm trees, heavy with coconuts, and watch the kids play in the pool in between monsoon showers. The horn bills and monkeys frolic in the adjacent palm trees and there we remain, unravel the city from our bodies and minds. At dusk we head inside to the warm glow of our cabins and freshen up before leap frogging from cabin to cabin in the rain to reach the main lodge for dinner.
Paul and I order the Sri Lankan curry, like we always do, while the kids opt for something more ordinary, like buttered noodles. The rain pours endlessly on the thatched roof, drawing out swarms of moths that were tamed only when the service staff squelch the lights, leaving us in the thick, dark of the jungle. Devoid of light, the lines between human and animal are erased and we become the black jungle. The lights are relit and dinner arrives a few moments later: curries of ambarella, a pineapple/mango-like fruit, fish, cloud-like rice and gotukola, a popular local leaf mixed with fresh grated coconut, onion and chili. We retire early after dinner, brushing our teeth in the outdoor bathroom while fireflies and geckos peer at us from the night. Our safari jeep will arrive for us at 5:00am the following morning.
We choose our seats like we we’re selecting rows in a movie theatre: Peter likes the height of the back row, Sam and Clementine take the middle and Paul and I settle in right up front. With grins plastered our faces, we hold tightly to our hats as we make our way to the park a few kilometers away, morning mist dampening our shirts and chilling our sleepy bodies awake. This will be our first safari.
As we cross a causeway into the park, fitted with watch towers and steep hills which roll into a lake on one side and tufts of trees clad in lavender fog wisps on the other, there is an unmistakable feeling that we are entering Jurassic Park. After a brief stop at the park gates to purchase our tickets and fill hungry hands with coconut roti for the ride, we are on our way down a series of red-clay paths that seem endless, yet intrinsically familiar to our guide. The mist still lies heavy in the park and the quiet is a sound bath for our polluted city ears. The animals find comfort in the anonymity the misty morning and we come upon our first elephant within the first few minutes. The park is full of peacocks, resting in trees, as if posing for a botanical painting and the following four hours are a slow cruise through a living museum of colorful birds, elephants and small creatures. I decide I could stay here forever, but breakfast awaits us back at the camp and we make our way out of the park, spotting birds and fox and her kits on the way out.
Upon refueling with string hoppers and dhal curry, we drive back towards the park to the Elephant Transit Home, where abandoned elephant calves are rescued and cared for until their eventual release back into the park at around five years of age. We watch while the babies are called to lunch, stumbling over one another and fighting for their turn for a bottle, like the human babies I once knew, seated next to me. After a quick stop for ice cream on our way out, we’ll spend another relaxing evening by the pool and awake the next morning to monkeys cracking coconuts on a large rock outside our cabin. The next several hours we’ll spend threading back through the rice paddies, preserving every ounce of safari silence for the city that waits ahead.
