Wildlife watching in Sri Lanka

By Liam Creedon

AAP: In the land of the leopard, it was the frogs that stole the show. Standing in a jungle clearing as night fell with that sudden tropical totality, their alien, jarring calls began to ring out through the gloom.

Not a typical croaking, but a primordial, car alarm-like “woo, woo, woo, woo” that reverberated like a Mexican wave of sound around the reed-fringed amphitheatre, tiny segments of which were lit sporadically by passing fireflies.

I couldn’t see the croaking culprits or even pinpoint what species they were, for the Sinharaja rainforest reserve in southern Sri Lanka is an amphibian hotspot, with new specimens still being discovered.

After throwing off the shackles of a vicious civil war, Sri Lanka has woken up to its vast tourist potential. Sitting like a discarded lemon pip off the South Indian coast, the island is a wildlife hotspot, boasting more than 400 species of birds and large game such as buffalo, crocodile and elephant, while also reputedly being the best place in the world to spot leopards.

As a result, Sri Lanka is fast becoming a top wildlife destination and a six-day tour promised to provide a glimpse of the island’s impressive diversity.

Sinharaja is difficult to get to. We were staying on the reserve’s boundary in an isolated hideaway which lay at the end of an arduous journey on unforgiving hill tracks. Martin’s Simple Lodge felt like the sort of place where if you were bitten by a snake, the anti-venom wouldn’t arrive in time. An outpost high in the clouds, it peers out over mist-swept jungle.

The final approach is a near vertical track, pock-marked with football-sized boulders, which zig-zags nonchalantly past sheer drops, falling away to the canopy thousands of feet below. To say the lodge was rustic would be doing the word a disservice.

The door to my room recalled a fruit crate and the toilet flushed by means of a wire attached to a topless cistern, depositing voluminous quantities of water elaborately across the floor.

The worst the jungle could throw at us was to be kept at bay by a rusting, iron grill and dejected net, held together with plasters belonging to previous inmates sent mad by unforgiving mosquitoes.

The dawn found myself and trip companion, a rather famous birder, referred to by our guides as “Mr. Bill,” sat on the veranda preparing for a day of wildlife watching.

As we were about to depart we were handed a pair of giant white socks. “It’ll be too hot for these” I told Sam, the guide. “It’s not the heat you’ll need them for,” he replied, ominously.

Minutes into the park and Sinharaja began to reveal its secrets. We were introduced to Sam’s buddy – Sunil the super guide, who possessed the power to conjure magical beasts from thin air.

The first of these was the green vine snake, lurking in a bush behind us as we gawped at blue magpies and hanging parrots squawking overhead. The pencil-thin snake boasts the local nickname of “eye plucker” due to its deeply alarming habit of launching itself at your face.

Sunil’s next trick was to produce the illusive Sinharaja bird wave, a rolling cacophony of noise and feathers in which various species of glamorous tropical birds, with suitably glamorous tropical names, join forces in a feeding frenzy – wreaking havoc on the jungle’s insect, seed and plant life.

But Sunil saved his best trick for last. The Serendib Scops Owl was only discovered in 2004 and has been reputedly seen by less than 100 foreigners. It is tiny, elusive and endangered.

These obstacles would have dissuaded an ordinary guide, but Sunil is not ordinary. He plunged off the trusted track and straight into the murk of primeval jungle.

Once hemmed in amidst the rainforest’s sweaty green bosom, we were soon constricted by heat and humidity. The ground underfoot squelched alarmingly, regularly swallowing feet and ankles and omitting a lingering, thick mulch scent.

Every inch was occupied. Vines, liana, rattan reared vertically like exclamation marks blotting out sunlight. And soon we were bleeding.

Grabbing at branches for support left hands ripped and torn as every sapling seemed armed with vicious hooks and spikes. It was fair to say that “Mr. Bill” and I were struggling.

Sunil signalled for us to stop grumbling. He pointed to an empty spot of nothing, waist-high in thick bushes two metres away. Silence. Then the empty spot of nothing blinked. A tiny, toy owl became visible in the gloom. A sandy-brown beauty staring back at us, with big, baleful eyes. We crept away, totally bewitched.

After showering us with gifts, the jungle decided to knee us in the groin. We hadn’t been told, but Sinharaja is the leech capital of the world. Earlier in the day “Mr. Bill” had been proudly boasting about his mosquito-proof shirt. Mosquito-proof it may have been. Leech-proof it was not.

Soon our clothes were blushing crimson. We were being gorged upon. Luckily our feet were protected by the huge white socks – “leech-resistant” Sam now explained.

Pulling at the leeches does no good. Their mouthparts snag in your skin and infection looms.

It was time to leave the jungle. But Martin’s Lodge still held one ghoulish trick up its sleeve.

Later that night I woke in a frenzy, disorientated in the jam-thick blackness with the mosquito net caught around my neck. Rushing to the bathroom I grabbed at my flannel. As I pulled it to my face – it wriggled. My head torch revealed I was clutching a bemused and highly unimpressed frog.

Our dawn descent was watched by the occasional bleary-eyed father emerging from a hut dressed in nothing but a nappy-like lungi. Clusters of school children, dressed all in white, lingered by the roadside, illuminating the gloom as they awaited the school bus.

Drive anywhere in Sri Lanka and it’s not long before you’re confronted by the legacy of the war. There’s a heavy military presence even in isolated rural areas. Soldiers sitting at the roadside are the norm rather than the exception.

In a country haunted by the Tamil Tigers, concerted efforts have been made to capture the iconography of the lion. Its name and image adorns everything from beer and the national flag to taxi firm logos.

Our next destination was Yala National Park in the south east of the island – the home of Sri Lanka’s other great feline icon – the leopard. Low-lying and coastal, it consists of open plains, dotted with lakes and fringed with scrub. And, with easy to spot crocodiles, elephant and buffalo, it feels distinctly African.

Yala means game drives and for these you need to get up very early. We were reliably informed that four drives in our ancient and temperamental jeep would almost certainly deliver a leopard sighting.

The park is wildly beautiful, but like much of Sri Lanka, the country’s troubled past is never far away. Sitting quietly in the jeep watching a huge bull elephant wallow at a waterhole, I noticed a mess of bricks littering the roadside. “From the tsunami,” Sam explained. “People died on the beach when the wave hit.” We were almost half a mile inland.

The game drives revealed a playful family of jackals, the rear end of a porcupine, mud-wrestling wild pigs and troops of langur monkeys, but still no leopards.

We got lucky on our final drive. Night was descending at full throttle and it seemed we would be leaving the park empty-handed once again. Heading back to the hotel we were flashed by a stationary Land Rover. We trundled alongside and there, fleetingly, she was.

At the edge of glade, her back to us, darker in the fading light, but unmistakably mottled. She sauntered back into the undergrowth, her passing hinted at seconds later by the barking of an alarmed sambar deer. I sat back, elated. We’d seen the leopard.

But, on cue, hidden in the bushes, the frogs started up their dusk chorus. I had to acknowledge it, despite the grandeur of the big cat, it was Sri Lanka’s much smaller inhabitants that had captured my imagination.