My knuckles are white from clutching the handle above the car door. We are speeding down a two-lane road, narrowly avoiding dogs, tuk-tuks and an occasional cow. The cows are especially nonchalant, stepping right into traffic like they own the place. Our driver is handling the car the way stunt drivers do in action movie chase scenes — seemingly aiming to put as many vehicles between us and the imaginary pursuers as possible. We swerve past everything and everyone. The fact that the oncoming traffic is mere meters away as we make our pass seems merely a nuisance. I close my eyes, forcing myself to relax into the chaos and just go with it. Slowly the madness of movement subsides. And after the next bend, from behind a row of coconut palms, the Indian Ocean comes into view.
We picked Sri Lanka blindly, pointing at a random place on the map. The tear-shaped island felt like it’d offer up the perfect cocktail of exoticism and comfort. Not as crowded as India and not as basic as the Maldives. If we made it to the East Coast, there was a national park where we could go on a safari. The latter was firmly on the #lifegoals list. My ego perked up the moment safari was in the picture. The idea of elephants and leopards was extremely appealing, not to mention photogenic. Plus, a National Geographic-style adventure would be an awesome way to round out the Asian portion of the trip.
But on hour 4 out of Colombo airport, dehydrated and questioning the sanity of our risk-immune driver, I wonder why I didn’t pick the Maldives. The towns grow sparser and the vegetation thicker and soon the car turns onto an unpaved road. A pair of peacocks greet us with fanned tails. We are now firmly on the grounds of the Yala National Park.
The hotel is nestled among the sand dunes and flanked by the ocean on one side and the jungle on the other. An open-air motel-style terrace with a foul-smelling fish pond leads to the rows of rooms. Ours is the very last one, remote and facing the dunes. A wild boar family is digging for roots in the shrubbery outside. “Do not touch, dangerous,” warns the bell boy. As if.
An hour later at the hotel bar, a skinny snake lays coiled on one of the stools. “No worry, it’s not really poisonous,” assures the waiter, placing a disturbing emphasis on the word “really.” He disposes of the serpent as we down our gin and tonics to steel the nerves. This is exactly what we’ve come here for — nature, in its raw, untamed element. The success of the trip is already beyond obvious. Snake phobias aside.
I can barely sleep at night. We had set an alarm for 4AM for the sunrise safari run. Every travel blog and Yelp review lists the mornings as prime time for animal spotting in the park. By the afternoon they are supposedly lethargic and overheated so the chances of seeing any wildlife drop drastically. Obviously, that’s not an option. We’ve come all this way.
And so we wake up at dawn and shuffle out with hordes of other sleepy tourists. The 4-wheel-drive safari jeeps, procured by the hotel from the nearby village, wait in formation. Our driver looks disheveled in a dirty t-shirt and a hastily knotted sarong in place of pants. As soon as he hits the gas pedal, we get why. The car has no suspension to speak of and we are on possibly the worst road in the world. The pothole-ridden dirt path has been repeatedly violated by storms, herds of elephants and god knows what else. The tsunami roared through this region in 2004, but it feels like maybe just last year. I tell myself that this is okay. It’s all part of the authentic experience. I ignore my butt that begs to differ.
At the ticket booth we pick up a safari guide who promptly directs our attention to a crocodile lounging in the road-side swamp. The creature is well camouflaged in the grass, but I can still make out its unblinking eye. Awesome, but what I really want to see is leopards, so we rattle on. The guide seems to know the grounds well. He directs the car toward a rock formation I’ve only ever seen in a Natural History museum diorama. This is surely a leopard haunt. My mind conjures wild cats sunning themselves on these very boulders. But right now they must be out to lunch, as the place is deserted. We don’t stick around, probably to avoid being on the menu. Instead we make our way down a treacherous path towards a cavalcade of jeeps. The guide exchanges a few words with other drivers. A leopard has been spotted in the vicinity not too long ago. The cats have their habits, so we park and quietly wait.
It’s Sunday and there are probably around 200 other jeeps in the park. Watching the tourists hang off the sides is like bonus material after the wildlife. Perched on the edges of their seats, cameras at the ready, their eager enthusiasm is immensely entertaining. Most are wearing their safari best — camo, khakis and wide-brimmed hats. Who will be the first to break Instagram with a leopard selfie? After ten minutes of intense peering into the bushes, every twig starts to morph into a tail. Maybe these cleaver cats are getting a kick out of watching us, watching them. After twenty minutes all we’ve managed to spot is a jungle hen. It may be the national bird of Sri Lanka, but really, it’s just a glorified rooster with specks of gold in its comb. A safari this does not make. We move on.
After a couple of turns, we come upon an idyllic scene, straight out of the Discovery channel. It’s a clearing complete with a lily pond encircled by dead-looking but picturesque trees. An eagle is resting on the highest branch. Inside the pond, a buffalo is taking his bath. The sun is relentless, and he’s submerged up to the neck, wrinkling his velvety nose at the water lilies. Off on the right in the bushes, I can just make out an elk family. According to script, a leopard should be crouching in the long grass somewhere close by. The guide knows this too, so we stop the car and sit in silence for some time, just looking. And suddenly, the peaceful bird chirps are pierced by a haunting call in the distance. Everyone perks up — this is apparently the warning call a deer makes when it spots a leopard. I almost rub my hands together in anticipation. But a few more minutes of silence yields nothing more than a colorful kingfisher with trendy turquoise feathers. He’s the most beautiful bird I’ve ever seen, but I’m disheartened by his arrival after psyching myself up for the leaping leopard. Defeated, we move on.
On a nearby hill, there’s a congregation of jeeps. After a few bone-rattling hours, the tourists’ faces have taken on a more sinister glow. Everyone looks beat, dusty and tinged with disappointment. The guide confirms, no leopards have yet been sighted today. I inquire about the number of cats in this park and the answer crushes me. It’s a mere 40 in the 380 square mile radius. What was I thinking? It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Suddenly a murmur passes through the crowd. A woman in the jeep next to us excitedly pulls on my sleeve and points into the distance. Somewhere in the prairie there is a hint of a shadow. I think I see a long tail whip side to side but with the sun in my eyes I can’t be too sure. The crowd goes wild as if Beyoncé just materialized in the middle of a street market. The shadow springs forward and gracefully retreats further away from the rambunctious spectators. I lose sight of it in the long grass. But I may be the only one. Everyone else seems to be confidently tracking the thing and attempting to point it out to me. But it’s like I’ve gone blind. I feel like I’m staring at one of those visual brain teasers. You stare long enough, and a picture will emerge. Except it doesn’t. The guide announces that the leopard has leaped into a tree where it intends to dose until sunset. If he’s so tuned into their daily schedules, why he didn’t he arrange for a rendezvous earlier in the tour? I have no choice but to accept this information.
Safari is drawing to an end. I’m feeling dejected. I was so close to maybe realizing a dream, but have somehow failed to act on it when the thing was right in front of my nose. I didn’t even see it leap away. We rattle down the road toward the exit, passing herds of deer, a cayote, wild boars, buffalo, even a lone elephant far in the distance. These pedestrian animals leave me cold, I don’t even bother taking pictures. I am mad at myself for feeling crushed, but the stupid hipster joke plays in my head on repeat: “if it’s not on Instagram, did it even happen?”
The next day I scroll the internet, looking for proof of my incompetence in the wild life spotting sector. The proof is surely out there. An Insta-blogger family had gone on the afternoon safari same day as us. Their feed is filled with leopards galore and baby elephants within an arm’s distance. The too familiar “you-keep-doing-it-wrong” sink hole starts to beckon, but I refuse to give in this time. I turn off my phone and sip my cocktail, watching the monkeys perched on a thatched roof of the reception building.
The gleaming ocean is before me. This is tsunami land. I try to imagine the unimaginable. How at first the water would have receded, leaving fish flopping on the sand. The curious and the clueless would have rushed towards the shore to marvel at this wonder and pick up the loot. Right at that moment, the powerful wave of destruction would have rolled in, sweeping everything off its path. It wiped the land clean of buildings and trees and life, to force it to begin again. Erasing history to write a story no one had heard before. It likely felt like the end then. But here I am, on the very same beach, watching the silhouettes of cargo ships on the horizon. They are charting their way from China towards India and Arabia, and this is the only seafaring route. They must sail past a tear-shaped island on the way to their final destinations. Through storms and calm waters, they sail on.
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