Bevary Holiday Home is a nice small guesthouse in Anuradhapura. Harindra, the owner, is a terrific guy who was very helpful to us in planning our trips around town. The rooms he offers are big and clean, with air-con and a hot shower. 

Besides Wilpattu, there are many other National Parks in Sri Lanka where you can do safaris. Yala National Park is the best known and most visited, but Udawalawe National Park is a good option to visit with your family as well. Yala and Wilpattu were the first to national parks in Sri Lanka. We chose Wilpattu NP because, as it’s further away from Sri Lanka’s Southern beaches, it’s a bit less crowded and still offers a good chance of spotting wildlife. This safari was definitely one to cross off our bucket list of things to do in Sri Lanka.

On our way to Wilpattu National Park

We got in his car and set off towards Wilpattu National Park, one of the biggest national parks in Sri Lanka. It was about a thirty-minute drive to the entrance of the park where his friend was waiting for us with his pick-up Safari jeep. The car was quite a sight for us, a normal pick-up with three rows of car seats attached in the back and a small roof to keep you dry if it’s raining. We climbed in the back and took off for the park. It was a five-minute drive to the actual entrance of the park. Once there we bought tickets for us, the car and the driver. There were a few other cars there having some breakfast before entering the park. We quickly paid for the tickets and entered the park so we wouldn’t have another car in front of us al the time. 

Our first wildlife!

After driving in the park for about five minutes we saw our first “wildlife”, some deer eating in the forest. We took some foto’s and continued our tour. A bit further wildlife spotter Lisa saw an eagle sitting on a branch of a tree. Well spotted Lisa! After we took some nice pictures and Jace had his first close-up look of a big predatory bird, the trip was already a success. Our little world traveler was loving it. We continued through the park with the landscape changing every hour or so. We spotted some beautiful kingfishers and there are wild peacocks everywhere. 

Birds, crocodiles and monitor lizards

Some beautiful birds alongside one of the many lakes that are in the park, made us almost miss what was right in front of us. A crocodile was lying just next to the road trying to warm up in the sun that was coming up. All around the park, we spotted small and big monitor lizards sunbathing in a tree or at the side of the road. The driver could stop very close to them and they wouldn’t move. Only when someone came too close, then they would slip away quickly into the grassy sides of the road. After the early wake-up call for Jace he fell asleep in the car so he missed the last hour or so. But our little traveler did fantastic on his first ever safari!

Chamelon and mongooses

When we were almost at the end of the trip when spotter Lisa saw a chameleon sitting on a small tree. No small feat because the pick-up was driving pretty fast! As we were looking at it and taking pictures it changed color. Very cool. Just when we thought we had seen most of the animals we could see there were two mongooses playfully jumping around a tree stump alongside the road, what a cool ending of a nice trip through Wilpattu national park!

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As you may have read (in our blogpost ‘Our introduction of Sri Lanka’) our very first impression wasn’t a very favourable one. But we’ve met a lot of nice people since then and seen some pretty cool things, such as monitor lizards and even elephants!

So far we’ve been in Negombo, Anuradhapura, Jaffna, Polonnaruwa, Kandy, Ella and now we’re in Unawatuna.

Here are a few pictures to show you what we’ve been doing these past two weeks, up until we went to Polonnaruwa. More pictures to follow soon!

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We thoroughly enjoyed exploring Sri Lanka’s Cultural Triangle, although with a little one in tow we didn’t manage to see all the sights. The temples in the Sacred City of Anuradhapura and the medieval kingdom of Polonnaruwa were very impressive. What an amazing serene atmosphere! Unfortunately, we had to give Sigiriya’s Lion Rock and Dambulla a miss because we really wanted to travel all the way north to Jaffna. On the morning we left Anuradhapura, Harindra, the incredibly kind owner of Bevary Holiday Home, found us a big three-wheeler (tuk-tuk) to take us and all of our luggage to the train station. Luckily there was one nearby so we had no problem getting to the station.

Waiting for the train

At the station, I was happy we were leaving from the platform closest to the entrance so I didn’t have to carry everything across the train tracks. We showed our tickets to the guy at the gate, went to the platform a took a seat to wait for the train to arrive.

Oh no! Changing platforms

Twenty minutes before our train was supposed to come there was a different train stopping from the other direction. Because there was some sort of problem with this train it didn’t leave on time and we heard an announcement that our train was leaving from platform two. Shit! Now we had to quickly carry everything to platform two via a tunnel in the station. After some heavy lifting and some help from a german guy who was nice enough to help us carry some stuff up the stairs we made it in time to catch the train.

First class trains in Sri Lanka

The fist class train is nothing compared to the third class train we took from Negombo to Puttalam. They have assigned seating and the carriages have air conditioning. The seats are nice like in an airplane but with more legroom. There are a few screens hanging from the ceiling which show a movie but (fortunately) there was no sound.

We didn’t have to buy a ticket for Jace so he was supposed to sit on our lap the whole way (about four hours). Luckily the seats across the aisle were empty so I could have a seat there and Jace had his own seat. After an hour or so he put his head in Lisa’s lap a fell asleep.

Entering a former war zone

The train ride itself was very nice but also confronting. We would almost forget that only six years ago, in 2009, the war between the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil “rebels” ended. Making our way through the beautiful landscape we were getting in the middle of the former fighting zone. Watching the buildings from the window of the train we could see a difference from the rest of Sri Lanka we’ve seen so far. There were many abandoned buildings that were broken down because of the fighting that occurred in the area. We could see houses with bullet impact damage. This was the first time for both of us to be in a former war zone that had so recently seen fighting.

From Bhuddist to Hindu temples

Something else that amazed us was that there are some big flat open spaces in this part of Sri Lanka. There is some food grown here but not a lot. When the train got a bit closer to the sea we could see some lagunas and more sandy places. Apparently, salt winning was done here before the war started. Arriving in the Jaffna area we could see a difference in the buildings and of course in the temples, the main religion here is Hindu so there are a lot of Hindu temples doted around the landscape. Because of the war, many of them are being rebuilt and many new ones erected. We want to rent a motorbike to explore this different part of Sri Lanka but that is for another blog.

Booking.com

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