Udawalawa

“Udawalawa National Park” has great reputation for allowing beautiful and rare animals to build their lives within that beautiful landscape. Mammals and bird are the most common animals available there at any moment. This is a paradise for the elephants and it is a common site to see a herd of elephants on the way along the park. The Udawalawa reservoir irrigate the whole park and the “Walawe Ganga” which flows through the park enhance the beauty more than enough to keep the memories of this paradise forever in their lives.

This was declared as a National Park on 30^th June 1972 as the 5^th National park in SriLanka and area of the park is 30,821 ha and basically lies in both Sabaragamuwa and Uva provinces. Since this is in dry zone it has mean day temperature of 29c over the year and 1524 mm annual rainfall.

There are four wildlife circuit bungalows in the park and those are

· Thibirigasmankada

· Veheragolla

· Sinuggala

· Gonaviddagala

All these bungalows are located near major water resources and this provide a great opportunity for visitors to observe the habits of the mammals and the birds.

In Udawalawa there are so many species of animals and the most common ones which can see at any part of this park are

mammals

· Elephant –Elephas Maximas

· Leopard –Panthera pardus kotiya

· Spotted deer –Axis axis ceylonensis

· Wild boar –Sus scrofa

· Water buffalo –Buballus bubalis

· Jackal –Canis aureus

Birds

· Great flamingo

· Indian cormorant

· Osprey

· SriLanka junglefowl

At the first day we found several herds of giant Elephants and herds of spotted doers. We were able to get nearer to the elephants and that was a amazing thing. On the way one elephant who was alone at that time try to attack our jeep and that was the most fearful moment I had in that trip.

On the way to the bungalow the jip stopped suddenly and it was about 7.00 in the evening. The sound of the elephants came out from the forest and it mad us scary so we didn’t get off from the jip. But we have to get off from the jip and we were able to repair it from an hour.

At night we stayed at the Veheragolla bungalow and it was near to a small lake. We went to the Walawe ganga at that night and had a bath. At night we found a animal like a huge doge came near to the bungalow digging the soil. It was a huge boar and the guide warned us not to get photograph because it will run if the flashers fall on it.

We had a good sleep and next day morning we found that thousands of birds were at the lake and some doers came to the lake. That day also we saw lots of animals but unfortunately we were unable to see a leopard at our trip. Evening we left that great place and that will be a memorable trip to me in my life forever.