When the alarm rang at 4.45am I wasn’t sure I wanted to go throughwith it. We were up at sparrow’s (Sri Lanka junglefowl’s?) fart for a morning safari in Yala, a 378 sq mile national park that is in parts tussocky, woody and lagoony, in the southeast of the south Asian nation.
Leopards were on our mind. During the game drive we’d done the afternoon before we’d glimpsed the rear of one of the 350 or so that live in the area, but that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it look had left quite a lot to the imagination.
Yala was where I was spending the second part of a week-long family trip to Sri Lanka, which would take my husband, our five-year-old and me on an easy loop from Colombo to Yala, via tea plantations in the Kalutara Highlands southeast of the capital; the gorgeous south coast beaches; and the fortified city of Galle, founded by Portuguese colonists in the 16th century.
This was a holiday that had been building for some time. Our son had finally started primary school, which had the twin advantages of the end of crucifying nursery fees and the appetite for a bit more soft adventure, the sort we enjoyed when child-free. Sri Lanka seemed to tick the boxes: not too gnarly, survivable jet lag (5.5 hours time difference) and varied enough to get a flavour of it in a short period of time. I tried not to think about how much easier a lovely Greek all-inclusive might be with a young child as I packed bug spray and anti-sickness tablets.
There was proper coffee waiting outside our tent at Kulu Safaris — and hot chocolate for Samuel — which we sipped as dawn began to break and our synapses began to fire. By the time we arrived at the Galge gate at Yala’s Block Five area, it was bright and warm, and I had adopted my best jolly mum voice to ramp up the enthusiasm for this wild scavenger hunt. Leopards, I trilled! Crocodiles! Painted storks!
Yala, the second-largest national park in Sri Lanka, is made up of five separate “blocks” — enclosed conservation areas so leopard numbers can be tracked. Block One has the highest number of leopards, but as a result is often unbearably busy in peak season. So Block Five it was.
Four hours later, bouncing across mud tracks in the Jeep in moves that threatened my pelvic floor, we’d still not seen more than a leopard’s flank dashing across the path. Some days are like that, sighed Praba Premasiri, our Tamil guide — which to me seemed like an important lesson in life, let alone in the art of safari.
But we had gawped at an elephant sticking its trunk into another safari-goer’s breakfast (there was some tutting from our vehicle about only eating outside the park), at hundreds of grey langur monkeys and a crocodile with its mouth wide open like it was smiling, so there was that. There were also hundreds of peacocks trying to seduce peahens, plus gazelles, and a fat mongoose scurrying up a tree, which appealed to my middle-aged tastes. Ooh, look, I said to my five-year-old, an eagle with something in his mouth! But he was asleep in the front seat.
We’d have seen more in Africa, most likely. But there a family safari typically costs thousands more and involves a complicated mix of flights and transfers, plus privately I thought the shattering emptiness of the savannah is wasted on the young. To capture the attention span of a reception-aged kid and his knackered parents, Yala was pretty unbeatable as an entry-level wildlife experience.
Back at base, a breakfast of Sri Lankan hoppers (pancakes), coconut sambol, honey and buffalo curd was waiting — thrillingly, 30 metres up in Kulu’s treehouse, reached bya set of rickety wooden stairs. It overlooks a lagoon with scary-looking signs warning of crocodiles. Storks flew across the water, lily pads swayed and monkeys jostled for position in the rosewood trees, which only I noticed as the other two were playing Uno No Mercy and I Spy.
• Read our full guide to Sri Lanka
We’d spent the first two days in Sri Lanka acclimatising in the Kalutara Highlands, two hours (ish) outside Colombo, staying at Glenross Living, a 19th-century Scottish hillside mansion turned wellness hotel buried in a tropical tangle of tea, cinnamon and rubber plantations. This provided an education, the type my son thought he’d left behind for the spring term: we learnt that Sri Lanka is the world’s fourth-largest exporter of tea, that rubber produced here is used for latex and tyres — and small bouncy balls that he wouldn’t let go of for the next week — and that cinnamon tea is a far superior sharpener than Earl Grey.
Samuel learnt how to tap a rubber tree on a walk around the 98-acre estate; the adults blissed out to the heavenly scent of cinnamon as we napped overlooking misty hills of fern and ivy. Over breakfast on Glenross’s terrace on our first morning we ogled Bengal monitor lizards slithering up the coconut trees, were deafened by chapping geckos and later sat silently as lightning struck the hills opposite and thunder rumbled over the heritage building. Our home in southeast London felt a galaxy away. Welcome to the tropics, kid.
After the Kalutara Highlands it was on to Yala for a couple of days — an easy five-hour drive along an empty, new highway, marvelling at lush palm tree groves, lagoons and road signs warning that peacocks were ahead — and the south coast beaches to finish our Sri Lankan trinity.
By the time we reached the hippy beach town of Mirissa, between Galle and Tangalle, we were all in need of a bit of doing nothing, and so gratefully flopped beside the 42m-long saltwater pool at Sri Sharavi Beach Villas & Spa. If I were 21 and could still fit into my elephant harem trousers, I’d love the town’s main drag of backpacker joints, cheap spas and cafés called things like Sunset Bar, Lost Paradise and Coconut Kitchen. As it was, three days of doing pulse-slowing activities, such as eating Sri Lankan chicken lamprais, a sort of fried rice wrapped in a banana leaf, for lunch, picking up king coconuts and frangipani flowers from the sand and playing volleyball in the pool, where the only wildlife was other people’s children, were just right.
Well, we were almost doing nothing. I’m not the sort to take it easy, even on holiday. One morning we kicked things up a gear with a morning cycle ride with Idle Bikes, taking on an eight-mile loop around the paddy fields on the outskirts of Galle, laughing at egrets balancing on water buffaloes’ horns as they lolled in big puddles (adults £15, children £8; idlebikes.com). Another night we took a gentle boat trip around Garadu Gaga lake, stopping in the middle to explore an island that looked like it belonged in Enid Blyton’s The Faraway Tree and to nudge mimosa flowers, which would close coyly when touched. We knew dusk by the bats that would wake up shrieking (relatable, I thought) and fly in their thousands across the water, darkening the sky above us. Samuel made all the right noises but I think he was secretly more taken with the four pigeons living on our hotel balcony.
We had timed our visit with Sri Lankan new year (next year on April 14), which meant fireworks and sundowners at one of the bars along the beach, Lantern@71 (cocktails from £8; revealthecollection.com). It was one of those perfect parenting moments — drinking something boozy with a straw in it, watching your kid and husband kick a ball about in the sand as the sun dripped into the sea. And as in the UK, we were still blissfully asleep by 10pm.
• 13 of the best Sri Lanka tours
Had we stayed in Sri Lanka longer, we would have explored the cultural triangle in the centre of the country, encompassing the ancient cities of Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Kandy plus the Unesco sites of Sigiriya rock fortress and the cave temples at Dambulla. I’d have liked to have taken the train from Kandy to Ella; and one day perhaps see more than just leopard puzzle pieces. Perhaps that was just too adventurous. Our week looping around southern Sri Lanka’s highlights was ideal. The five-year-old survived. So did his caregivers.
Cathy Adams was a guest of Stubborn Mule, which has seven nights’ half-board from £2,702pp, including flights, transport, tours and some extra meals (stubbornmule.com)
