A Gift Of Landscape

Nowhere is life’s excellence, its fullness, its force and its music, its mystery, its damage and radiance more apparent than in Sri Lanka, says Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

- Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

There it is,” pointed the naturalist Chandika Jayaratne. I sat up in my seat in the jeep. “I see it!” But perhaps the words never even left my mouth. Against a milky dawn horizon, atop a boulder, I saw a leopard’s silhouette. Indolently, with the muscular majesty of a formidable predator, it pawed at something — a side of meat, or as if dislodging grit. We were in Sri Lanka’s Yala National Park, on the peripheries of its newest and most dazzling resort, Wild Coast Tented Lodge. “This might be the leopard that growled at me the other night” — Jayaratne had mentioned this encounter to me the previous day. And the resort manager had also cautioned of leopards near the camp. Camp, of course, was a misnomer for this world-class hotel — comprising handsome cream cubes of top-notch luxury — book ended by the forest on one side and the ocean on the other.

Presently, the jeep restarted and we set out for the jungle, leaving the leopard, likely a young female, to rest; already, our safari had begun auspiciously. Our second leopard sighting was not as intense — an older male nestled in the branches of a tree. But while we were stuck in a line of jeeps, clamouring for a view, we had a Yala moment: an elephant and her stripling marched behind our jeep, a few feet away, exasperated by our presence. My heart skipped a beat when she raised her trunk. I drew in a gulp of cold air and looked out at the landscape, its time-paused quality, with remnants of early civilisations, including Situlpahuwa and Akasa Chaitiya. Yonder, tremendous rocks rose, including Elephant Rock, which recalls the silhouette of the giant pachyderm. I felt as if I was in the cradle of ancient time.