Notes and photos from guided tour in Jan 2013 (1 Viewer)

[Tony Knight]

Not a trip report as such but;

1/ a link to my flickr photos showing what you can expect to see in Sri Lanka (http://www.flickr.com/photos/54189378@N02/sets/72157632739338887/ , a few attached to this thread) plus

2/ some notes/observations from our visit.

We went on a private guided tour with bales, visiting;

Habarana (Cinnamon Lodge)
Kandy (Ellerton)
Nurawa Eliya (Tea Factory)
Uda Walawe (Centauria)
Yala (Chaaya Wild)
Galle (The Lighthouse)
Sinharaja (The Blue magpie)
Colombo (Galle Face Hotel)

Cinnamon Lodge is beautiful - make sure you allow enough time to just walk around the lake and gardens alongside the organised trips to cultural sites. We didn't and really regretted this.

Kandy/Nurawa Eliya - The rains came down for almost our entire stay at these locations so we barely saw anything here. Devastated that our trip to Norton Plains had to be cancelled due to the heavy rain on the scheduled day. Apparently not that uncommon. Ellerton Hotel was very picturesque (if you forgot the fog and rain!) but was 45 mins from Kandy and not easy to find for our guide.

Uda Walawe - great for elephants and bee-eaters. Try to get to see the nursery area where wild baby elephants descend at set times in the day (3pm?) to be fed milk via a syphon/hose before wandereing back into the wild. Centauria hotel is not the best but the room was reasonable size and the gardens were very good for birds early morning.

Yala - good for birds, leopards and langurs but tracks are very bumpy. Sobering to hear how many died here in the tsunami. Can get busy at leopard sightings. Hotel was ideally placed just outside the park but you feel as though you are in the park. Sadly left my camera at the dinner table when i went back to the room for something and found a shikra perched on the furniture 20 feet from me, .....live and learn !!

Sinharaja - can be frustrating to get good views of the birds (as my photos show !). Really need a good guide who knows the calls and where the frogmouths and owls are currently roosting. We had a very young keen guy but he didn't seem to spot as much as the guide behind us so we kept walking back to see what he and his party were looking at ! Leech numbers depend on recent weather. The park was quite dry so we didn't see a single leech on the main path but our guide who frequently disappeared into the bushes looking for specials had to remove a few. disappointed not to get a good view/photo of a Blue magpie. Sinharaja was 4-5 hrs drive from galle and columbo, not the 2 hours our Bales itinerary said !!

Strongly recommend the Harrison book, which is excellent.

Tony