Overall summary

Important note about access to the posts:  to access the chronological part of this blog either go to 

• the bottom of this first page and click on "older posts' or
• the Archive on the RHS of any page, click on 'March' (which is when I set the pages up) and you will see inter alia a post for each day we were away.

This was a very enjoyable trip.  I would certainly recommend Jetwing to anyone contemplating a similar - or in fact any - trip to Sri Lanka.  I may add further to this post as I go through reacting to comments (very few thus far) and inserting additional images etc.

Most of the images were taken by me, but I have inserted some by Frances and  Rob/Carol in places where they add to the narrative.

This blog will cover our trip to Sri Lanka intended for April - May 2012.  It is mainly a wildlife trip with some fair interest in the gardens around the country and the history and architecture.

The title of the blog reflects the fact while farm ponds (in the UK) are called dams in Australia in Sri Lanka they are called 'tanks'.  At this stage I have no idea why.  That started me thinking about a famous Esso advertising slogan, but on reflection I decided it might lead to some ambiguity, and possible displeasure from the authorities,  so adapted it slightly: we are after all expecting to see a bunch of elephants at various points in this trip, but probably not any stripey felines.  Spotted felines are very much on the agenda.

I will make the linguistic/zymurgic comment that in both Tanzania and Vanuatu the local beer is called Tusker.  However in Tanzania this refers to pachyderms while in Vanuatu it is about porkers.  In neither case do they have the property of Camel cigarettes of having a picture of the factory on the packet. In Sri Lanka the main brewery keeps the feline tale lashing under the name of  Lion.  They seem to have four brews (plus the boring Carlsberg of which conglomerate they are part).  I expect there to be a fair bit of testing what it tastes like although someone else's view is not promising in terms of variety.!

After a few introductory pages those for the trip itself begin with an extract from our itinerary (which could be thought of as the theory) followed by comments on, and images of what actually happened (aka the practice).

the final section of the blog will be thematic pages covering the major subjects of the trip: various forms of wildlife, nosh, accomodation, gardens and archaeology/religion..

Initial planning

The genesis for this exodus was a Christmas 2009 present from Frances in the form of a book covering the 100 best birding sites in the world by Dominic Couzens. We have visited 12 of the sites and (as she intended) I stared pondering which others needed a visit.  I was still feeling opposed to very long (ie more than about 15 hours) plane flights after the massive tiredness from our straight through flight from the UK which suggested somewhere in Asia was the go.

The entry for Sinharaja Forest in Sri Lanka looked rather interesting.  It was ranked #17 with the big attraction being very diverse mixed flocks. I liked the idea of getting a whole lot of ticks in one place.  Frances had also read somewhere about the excellent gardens in Sri Lanka so we seemed to have a definite combined interest.

A visit to Google for Bird tours Sri Lanka was the next effort.  This got me to a consolidator site who, as is the nature of such things bounced me on one of their 'operatives'.  This was Jetwing tours who, to my surprise got back to me within about 6 hours with a very pleasant communication.  They advertise in "British Birds' so were obviously not a total owl (ie fly-by-night) company.

A friend in the UK suggested another company to look at.  They were also very responsive to my approach and were headed up by Sri Lankas leading birder. 

I then started some reading, with an out of date copy of the Lonely Planet guide.  Looking at the places they recommended (other than the beach resorts which have no interest for me) gave me a good list of places.

Of course I also scanned the DFAT travel advisory for the country.  I was particularly taken by this comment

"The safety standards you might expect of transport and tour operators, including adventure and water sport activities, are not always met."

The safety standards I expect in such a country - or indeed from tour operators in any country -  are very skimpy so I expect they will be well met.

We decided that it might be nice to have some friends travel with us and floated the idea with a number of them.  One couple- Rob and Carol - have decided to join in.  This also defined our starting period: it seemed important to do the trip in April before all the migrants head off back to the North, and the male half of this couple has an appointment with a marathon in Canberra on 15 April.  So we are leaving on the 16th: this means Rob has chosen an aisle seat as he reckons he might have trouble climbing over people after six hours in an aircraft seat!

After some discussion of alternatives it seemed that both companies we were looking at went to similar places but the Jetwing team were more generalists while the alternative were more full-on birders.  Given that 3 of the 4 people in our group were non-twitchers the generalists seemed to be the choice and got the tick.  They were then very good about waiting a few weeks (OK, months) while we sorted out details at our end of the arrangement.

Payment of the deposit went very smoothly - mainly because after our trip to the UK I realised that the Westpac site was full of bull**it and all one really needed was an account number and a Swift code.  The arrangements for making the final payment were very civilised and the timing was determined by when we thought the Ocker had peaked against the Greenback.  (It did go up a bit more but then started dropping again, so we didn't do as bad as we have often done in trying to win on currency!)

Don't Fly me to the moon

Just get me from Sydney to Colombo and back!

My usual starting point with booking air travel is Expedia Australia.  They are often where I end up as well, since I can get good deals on cars with them as well.  In this case we don't want a car as the Sri Lankans are providing that.

It seemed clear from Expedia that flights from Australia via wherever ending up in Colombo all got in around midnight and the return flights left about 90 minutes later.  (This caused some perturbation in specifying the exact dates for the rest of trip: although we won't actually get to the first accommodation until the 17th April, we need to book the accommodation starting on the 16th!)

The best deal seemed to come from Malaysian Airlines.  QANTAS flights on the way home all seemed to involve longer holdovers in Singapore and Emirates seemed determined to send us via Dubai (and thus have a 14 hour leg, a several hour holdover in a really unpleasant airport and a 5 hour flight back.

The Malaysian on-line ticketing system seemed to have a life of its own, but with perseverance I got it to accept our booking.  So did our friends - one of who is a database management professional and reckoned they needed some more resources in their system since he recognised the problem.  So we are booked!

A reader may wonder why, since we  live near Canberra, we are starting our flights in Sydney.   There are several reasons for this:

• By the time one has travelled to Canberra airport waited and for their 'systems' to process you, taken the flight and transferred to the International terminal it is very little less time than driving;
• The cost of the flights (if more than one person is in the group) is more than the cost of hiring a car.  With 4 of us my guess is that the total cost , including cabs to the airport on one hand and petrol on the other) is about $300 driving and $600 flying.
• Canberra Airport is one of the most revolting places on Earth.  I am sure that if Dante had wanted to have a place worse than being pitchforked into the fires of the Inferno he would have come up with somewhere like this.
• By not using the airport one avoids adding revenue and kudos to the owners of Canberra Airport who in my opinion really deserve a close inspection of traditional hay handling implements!

It is now only a few days to go  and I was contemplating the joys of checking in online at 10pm on the Saturday before we left to make sure we got reasonable seats.  Just on a chance I rang Malaysian to see if I could do this over the phone.  I succeeded for the outward legs and was so excited I didn't enquire about the inbound trip.  However when I passed this on to Rob, giving him our booking code he fixed up all their seats and our return ones also.  Well done that boy!  Well done that airline!  (This turns out to have been a tad optimistic since the pelican on the other end of the phone booked us 4 seats out of 5 on the leg from KL to Sydney.)

Some mappish material

Here is an initial Google Earth screenshot showing quite a few of the spots we expect to visit.

Other images will be added as seems appropriate.

To begin with here is a screendump  showing the surrounds of Villa Talangama.

Travel Guides

The starting point is of course Lonely Planet.  Before advancing much on this foray I borrowed a somewhat ancient copy from the Queanbeyan Library and it seemed entirely adequate.  Our friends used the (unfortunately no longer available) Borders Library to suss out the latest edition but did purchase one!

Frances searched the net for an alternative and came across a JPM Guide as the only alternative.  So we got it - very cheaply and were astonished to find how small it is.  Literally pocket sized (64 x A6 pages), but it did seem to cover the main stuff.

Somewhat later we were chatting with a neighbour and found her daughter writes guides for the Bradt imprint, with whom we were not familiar.  They do a guide for Sri Lanka but being a cheapskate I thought I would check prices on Amazon before ordering.  There was one review there which was very negative.  On looking up the reviewers profile he seemed to be a serial whinger:  I wondered if he was related to Philippe from the Jetlag Travel guide series?  Reverting to the Bradt site they offered quite a chunk of the general material for on-line browsing and it seemed quite reasonable.  So some funds have been invested, through Amazon because they were as usual a lot cheaper.

So I think Rob and Carol will take their LP and we will take the Bradt version.   Feedback will be included at sometime after we return.

Some more or less random links

 Tammy's Holiday Camp

Birding

Endemic birds of Sri Lanka
Fat birder links
A trip report

Other Animals
Reptiles
Mammals

Vegetable things

No, not members of certain political parties or sporting teams, but plants and fungi.

• Orchids in Kandy- and elsewhere in Sri Lanka
• Other flowers

Jetwings folk

In setting things up we dealt with Paramie.  Our tour guide was Suchithra.

April 16 From Carwoola to Colombo

The plan for today is to meet our friends on the outskirts of Canberra and drive to Sydney airport.  We then catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur (aka KL) and transfer to a flight to Colombo.   The essential part of this plan is to spend less time in aircraft than is involved in going to Europe or South America!

The trip started well with a meet in Bungendore and a steady drive to Sydney. It looked as though the tunnel might be jammed, but it cleared once people stopped gawping at the other lane. So we got to the airport on time. There we spotted what Rob called the first leopard of the trip.

This was actually a  female human wearing very tight leopardskin pattern pants. In one swoop she captured awards for

• Pattern of the day
• Bird of the day and 
• mammal of the day

She also added "bad taste of the day" to the list of categories. Frances, to whom the pattern category belongs, has said the winner of that category shoould be the uniform of the Malaysian female cabin crew.

The Malaysian check-in system worked well as did immigration and security. One guy was doing a lot of talking at security as he was a courier taking human stem cells back to Germany. I found the Tax refund place to get my GST (~VAT) back on Frances's bins. The amazing thing was that half the people in the queue didn't meet the rules- too long since purchase; not $300 in one purchase etc etc..

The flight was quite reasonable: only about half full. Some good scenery was seen as we crossed the centre of Australia.

The second of those images shows some very red hummocks somewhere near the Kimberlys.  If any of the Hancock family ever fly this route it must be like a shopping trip!

A surprising aspect of the arrangements was that the information given by the trip monitor site included the heading (tail or head) and speed of the wind. At one point it changed from 60kph tail to 80kph head within 5 minutes. A little bit bouncy at that point, but generally a smooth flight.  There were some interesting late afternoon clouds as we got close to Kuala Lumpur.

The business in transfer at KL was generally OK although many of the prices for duty free were a little harsh ($A250 for a bottle of fancy Scotch). We got cheaper. The flight to Colombo was full at least and pushed back from the gate with about 12 folk still trying to find room for their carry on. Flight a little bumpy but given it took off at 2am body time was not too bad. We landed on time and everything happened reasonably well. Getting the ATM to deliver cash and return my credit card was a little fraught (as they had an unexpected category "Cash advance from credit card" which I initially didn't spot) but that happened OK in the end.  See my main blog for some downstream stuff on this.

By then it was the next day so read on.

April 17 Recovery and acclimatisation

Morning, relaxation. Afternoon, visit Talangama Tank to look for birds.

We met our guide (who we call, at his request, Hettie – rather than use his family name Suchithra as advised by Jetwing) after getting the money and joined the chaos in the pick up area while he got the Jetwing van. We then had an hour of touring from 35km N of Colombo through the city and then 15 km east. On route we noticed:

• Many statues of Buddha, many with flashing blue and red LEDs forming a halo around the head;
• Lots of turf accountant premises. The first three had police stations opposite which we thought might be a pattern, but then the bookies continued and the copshops disappeared;
• it was raining and most people carried brollies (even the cops in uniform).
• There were lots of cattle wandering around and at one point a dozen of them loomed up like the zombies in a Living Dead movie.

Then we got to Villa Talangama. Caesar Augustus would be jealous of a villa as great as this. It is a huge place with just us in it. The staff had stayed up until 2am to greet us, give us a juice and cart our kit around. Excellent. We agreed that breakfast would be at 10 am if we were up by then which we were. This was a huge meal of very healthy stuff served by the excellent staff. It was served under an umbrella beside the pool giving a view over thee Tank. We had a conversation with Hamish - the owner of the Villa - and made arrangements for tea at 7pm (we're going birding with Hettie at 3:30).  Here are a few images of the villa and its fittings (mainly taken by Frances).

 Hamish pointed out that we were lucky to have arrived at 2am as the traditional song festival 50m away had only finished at 1:30am. This was part of the New Years Festivities (which seem to last 5 days at least with New Years Day itself in the middle). Possibly lucky to find we could get rooms etc at this time.

Frances and I arose about 9:30 and were greeted with this view.

We all went for a prowl together (repeating more or less one which Rob and Carol had already done).  A good collection of reptiles were seen:

Land Monitor

 Water Monitor

Garden Lizard

Rob good an excellent image of a Dragonfly, which annoyed me for several minutes by refusing to pose!

Many birds seen, of which several were additions to my life list. My favourites of this stage were initially the White-bellied waterhens

with little fluffball black chicks (which didn't hang around to be photographed), but were overtaken by the Flamebacks- very lurid woodpeckers.  The Tank was a bit low on water, but high on birds as shown in this Rob image.

I then decided to go for a run to the wall of the Tank and perhaps a bit further. When I got about 1km from the Villa there was a lot of interesting stuff happening so I went back and got my camera.

The tractor driver wasn't real happy about having his photo taken even at 50m away. Then I saw the Pheasant-tailed jacanas

and I was a very happy chappy.  A cooling and cleansing dunk in the pool completed the business.

In the afternoon we went for a slightly longer walk with Hettie, where we saw very many birds and generally had an excellent time. Highlights were the whistling ducks and cinnamon bittern. As we had not used the car at all this was all able to be counted as Green Birding.  While relaxing from all this exercise a monkey

ran across the lawn, getting a very steely gaze from Hamish's dog.  (I cannot imagine the battles that would ensue between our small dog an monkeys!)

The evening meal was enlivened with a bottle of Merlot and was generally excellent. The main dish was fish (rated by Hamish as better than chicken - note from later in the trip: this opinion is strongly endorsed) and was accompanied by many tasty vegetables. Definitely a great meal.

Bird of the Day:  Black-rumped Flameback

Other vertebrate of the Day:  Garden lizard

Pattern of the day:  Wrought-iron Gates

Bad taste of the day: none.

Read on

 

April 18 To Sinharaja

After breakfast leave for Martin’s Simple Lodge, Sinharaja for two nights. Afternoon, birding at Sinharaja Rainforest. A UNESCO World Heritage Site for lowland endemics and mixed species bird flocks. According to a study of the mixed species bird on average 42 individual birds occur in the flocks, which makes this world's largest mixed species bird flock. The mixed species Bird flock study of Sinharaja forest has been continuing since 1981 and is considered as the World's longest studied bird flock study. Birding highlights include Red-faced Malkoha, Sri Lanka Blue Magpie, White-faced Starling and Scaly Thrush.

Up early as we had a 5 hour drive to get to Sinharaja and to do some birding in the afternoon.  The shower at the Villa was itself a work of art (yes, part of the room is open to the sky)

 On the first morning Frances had been having a shower when a Palm Squirrel ran across the top of the wall!

While having another huge breakfast our attention was drawn to a family of pigs trotting through the adjacent, vacant, block.  At a more delicate level we spotted this butterfly having its breakfast.

In fact the drive was going to be slow, as there was much traffic on the roads due to everyone going to visit their families for New Years. This seemed to particularly infest the roads with 

• tuk-tuks (here called 3 wheelers) on the one hand, driven surprisingly slowly – but then it is difficult for something powered by 150cc (basically a lawn mower motor) to drag a family of four and a few sacks of rice along at a great speed – and 
• buses driven at great speed and no respect for sanity - let alone traaffic laws.

Travelling at a fair speed (faster than tuk-tuks but slower than buses) were competitors in bike race led out by a series of cars full of people screaming at the traffic to get out of the way. Most of the bikes were more like M Poppins than C Evans but plenty of sweat was flying.

We went through a number of towns

including stopping to try to get some bread and also beer. Here we made a BAD decision and only got 12 cans of Three Coins (at Rs 100 ~ $A0.80 per can). An interesting aspect of the shop was a sign prohibiting photos. Why was this so- we thought the shops interesting but who would object?  This is a smaller shop featuring among its products references to another movie franchise

There were many adverts for TAFE type colleges, quite a few of which mentioned studying to work in Australia.  Frances noted one for the "Academy of Sugar Craft"

Back on the road with a few stops for interesting birds including Honey Buzzard and Crested Serpent Eagle.  Then we got to the place where we swapped vehicles from our van to a Jeep to cart us up a rather basic road to Martin's Simple Lodge. Some commentators on this Lodge had expressed concern about the road,

but I think I would have taken the Subaru up it with little problem and no damage. Whatever, we made it - included a stop to gawp at a Black Eagle out in the valley - and after settling in went out for a birding session with Hettie and our Forest Dept guide Chandra.

This went pretty well and a number of species were recorded. I reckoned that from 3pm we were entitled to regard it as no-carbon birding so this becomes another green day.
 I didn't take any bird images but this orchid was very spiffy:

There were a few "home comforts" out in the forest including well designed shelters

 and a well designed, but leech infested, dunny.

When we got 2km out it started to rain. In fact it poured down and we all got thoroughly wet except Frances who was wearing rain pants. The road effectively transformed from a dusty track to several modest streams within about 10 minutes.
We were also all, except Chandra, wearing Leech Socks which are supposed to keep the little suckers at bay (or at least visible so they could be flicked). This seemed to work for most of us although Rob got well sucked and bled for about 4 hours. (Chandra was not fussed by the leeches: she seemed to feel them creeping around and flicked them off wioth a handy twig.)

Evening meal was enhanced by some of the beer purchased earlier and was quite good although the food was a little blander than we were expecting.

Bird of the Day: Black Eagle

Other Vertebrate of the Day: Ruddy Mongoose

Pattern of the day:  the table top at Martins.

Bad taste of the day:  leeches (The leeches probably rated the leech socks as bad taste of the day!)

Read on

April 19 Sinharaja

Full day birding at Sinharaja Rainforest.  This may be green birding day in Sri Lanka.

I had a fairly ordinary nights sleep, possibly being a little dehydrated and not having a big enough pillow.  Of course at dawn I was solidly asleep and as a result I was not up early enough to see the Sri Lankan Blue Magpies come to feed on moths in the breakfast area. I did get a good look at the rainforest however ....

... and a Junglefowl came to visit.

The place is quite well set up as an eco lodge with solar hot water and his own mini hydro-electric scheme.  It is certainly 'simple' but is also very close to the forest and wildlife (which is the reason for coming here) and all other accommodation is at the foot of the hill about 40 - 60 minutes jeep drive away.  Surprisingly for such a remote place there was good cellphone coverage. Perhaps Telstra should send a mission to Sri Lanka to work out how to do it?  (See below more significant comment on this!)

As no-one had been able to acquire bread yesterday our breakfast included coconut roti: while it looked a bit like dwarf bread (which is inherited not baked) it tasted excellent. It was enhanced by application of Woodapple jam.

The aim of the day was to walk up and down the road to the Research Centre and visit a couple of other places of interest. The first of these was to try to locate the Serendib Scops Owl. We failed, but did find a beautiful green pit viper under a bank.

The other snake species seen on this day was a Keelback.  Nowhere near as attractive or venomous.

As we walked out to the Centre we found some Malabar Trogons. I really like this genus: like parrots but "softer".  Unfortunately they stayed out of camera range. Several of the other endemics were located until we found a gang/family of Sri Lanka Blue Magpies.

It seems that several of the guides feed them at this point, including one bloke who turned up with two German clients. He had the Magpies feeding off the top of his telescope.

This group ended up at the Centre at the same time we did. Then their equivalent of Chandra turned up to say he had found the Sri Lanka Frogmouths. The guide counselled his female client that it would be muddy getting there and that if a leech got her she wasn't to scream as it would scare the froggies. She immediately found a leech on her and screamed which scared the pants off all of us and caused her spectacles to crash to the ground. It was a bit of a struggle getting to the Frogmouth position and very muddy.

Note the white 'spats': they are in fact leech socks which seem to deter the little beasts from going up your leg.  They have other ways in however so constant vigilance is required.
The Frogmouths (an endemic species) were a lot smaller than our home crew and very cute.

At least the Germans were interested in Nature. We saw a Pommie couple who looked very miserable (and totally inappropriately dressed). This was not improved by the large patch of blood on the female's backside where a leech had obviously had a good feed. Two other large groups charged through – one set of Pom blokes wearing shorts and a group of Russian females, some of whom at least were wearing jewel enhanced thongs – in a rain forest!!!
 There were a lot of orchids around.  One species (unidentified) was called 'ground orchid' ...

... while the other, shown in close up yesterday, was Arundina graminifolia was rather tall!

Eat your heart out, Little Dumpies!
Also of interest in the plant department were some Pitcher Plants.  We could distinguish two species, the first of which was quite tall ...

 ... while the second was low, almost on the ground.

We had also enjoyed the masses of butterflies around of which two of the smaller species seemed to take a liking to my shoes. 

Three-spot Grass-yellow

 Angled Pierrot

They were easy to photograph while some of others were impossible. We particularly liked the Tree Nymphs - large, back and white beasts that floated like something out of Avatar! Butterflies will have a separate summary page.
I enjoyed this monster snail

 ...  and this attractive spider species popped up at various points throughout the trip.

A few other arthropods were also of interest, especially the millipedes. These were a contender for pattern of the day.  Rob took the snap, and marvelled that anyone - in this case Frances obliged - would put their hand in that close for scale.

 I also liked the shapes made by the vicious thorns on this rattan palm.

We had walked halfway back to the Lodge when a flock came through so beetled off to look at it. A Red-faced Malkoha was found as part of theflock: very pleasing as our trip was based on a Jetwing standard “Malkohas and Leopards” outing. We then went back to the Research Centre. While there we noticed the cloud building up again and sure enough got wet again. Taking off my leech socks and checking my clothes and body I found I had carted 10 leeches back to the Lodge. Yecccch!
Bird of the Day:  Malabar Trogon (the Magpies were semi tame)
Other Vertebrate of the Day:  Green Pit viper
Pattern of the Day:  Can't remember!!
Bad taste of the Day:  Bejewelled thongs on Russian tourists.

Read on

April 20: Baby elephants

After breakfast leave for Centauria Inn, Embilipitiya for one night. Afternoon, visit Udawalawe National Park for dry zone birds and Elephants. Look for dry zone birds, which include Little Green Bee-Eater, Malabar Pied Hornbill & Blue-faced Malkoha. In a visit to Udawalawe National Park close to 50-60 Elephants can be seen and the Nursery Herd, which comprise of many baby Elephants, is one of the key attractions.

 The day began in an early but relaxed manner including watching the Magpies in the eating area. We also got enough of a view of a Giant Squirrel for Hetti to identify it. An impressive black beast with tasteful ginger around the head. Apparently this is a mountain subspecies.  Here is a view of sunrise.

Breakfast was then had, including commercial bread, unanimously rated as inferior to the coconut roti. After trundling down the road to the bottom of the hill Hetti announced we had 40km of bad road and then 50 of good road. In fact the first several kms were quite well surfaced but a tad twisty. It then got rough dirt as surface as we weaved through a few mountains and villages. Much of the area was devoted to tea plantations.  In one, a dog - surprisingly not light brown in colour - had found that a protruding rock was a good spot for guard duty.

If only human security guards were that sensible instead of behaving in the objectionable manner they usually do!

Several of the villages were decked with white banners indicating that funerals were happening. Posters with photos of the deceased were stuck on every flat – or near flat – surface. We found out later that white means an ordinary citizen while yellow bunting means that a monk is being interred. Many of the houses in the villages were painted in gay colours.

As another bit of lifestyle Hetti explained that a sprig of palm flower stuck on the front of a car/van/bus meant the occupants were on a pilgrimage. (Some turned up in Yala a couple of days later: it seems Buddha is into efficiency and agrees that pilgrimages can include game spotting in a National Park where this saves an extra long trip.)

Seven species of bird and some playful monkeys, using the power lines (Rob image)

were spotted in transit before we stoppped for lunch near the Elephant Transit home (where thy are cared for but not allowed to imprint on humans) just outside Udawale NP. Before lunch we inspected a couple of trees known to Hetti and found Collared Scops Owl therein. Not as rare as the Serendib SO but still pretty exciting.
 As I failed to get a shot of the owls - they were rather well concealed - I photographed another snail instead.

Lunch was in a restaurant opposite the transit centre. It was rather bland and one of our number – wearing an Arsenal FC shirt - ordered fish 'n' chips. The menus also featured “Cattle fish”. We were intrigued by the group next to us who seemed to comprise about 6 couples of different nationalities. They also babbled somewhat in a fairly banal way. The conclusion was that they were a Mixed Feeding Flock.

We then rumbled down the road to the Park passing over a big dam. Soon after getting into the park we found our first peacocks.  They were pretty impressive

 When one raised its tail it was very impressive.

 On the other hand, when up in a tree they were very confusing if not seen clearly!

Then we found a large herd of elephant grazing in tall grass so hard to photograph. This is what the Park is known for. After watching them for a while we pressed on, noting that rain was surrounding us on 4 sides. Shortly thereafter rain was above us as well and the top was put on the jeep greatly reducing visibility (which of course the rain had also done). The sides were still open so I was having trouble keeping myself and the camera dry and retreated to join the driver in his cab. As the rain was coming from the passengers side I could see little and hear nothing through the closed, and fogged up, window. I did get to see one big elephant which was within 3m of the drivers open window (the streaking is due to the pouring rain not bad focus)

but didn't even hear folk say that the rain had stopped and the top had been taken off.

When I eventually realised what had happened I returned to the rear where several species were added to the trip list and my life list! We met another elephant wandering along the road but he just prowled on past.

 Malabar Pied Hornbill

 Changeable Hawk Eagle

Our Hotel for the night was about 20 minutes further down the road and was rather grand, The usual business of porters grabbing our bags and then standing around with their hand out was annoying as always. However, sitting on the verandah and having a medicinal dose of Glenlivet overcame our frustration. It also generated the first Geckos of the trip.

Our evening meal was quite pleasant in a bland sort of way. The astonishing bit was when Rob found that some of the little packets of butter had been opened by a previous diner and recycled.

Bird of the day:  Malabar Pied Hornbill
Other vertebrate of the day: elephant eating grass
Pattern of the day: can't remember
Bad taste of the day:  recycled butter (although its taste wasn't actually checked)
Read on