Paradise Island

Sri Lankas dazzling southern coastline offers natural beauty, thrilling safaris, pristine beaches and a host of alluring luxury resorts.

- Marisa Cannon

It’s just gone 6am and I’m jolted awake by the aggressive revving of our Jeep’s engine. Rumours of a leopard sighting have been hastily phoned through the network of guides, and every vehicle in the vicinity jumps into action. Our driver slams his foot down and we hurtle forward over the scrub land towards a grove of trees where a cluster of 4WDs have gathered, packed with day-trippers peering out of their open-tops. After a few minutes, Pisandu, our guide, breaks the news: “We just missed them. Drinking at the watering hole… a mother and two cubs.”

Yala National Park on Sri Lanka’s southern coast has the densest leopard population in the world, but that doesn’t make the elusive cats any easier to spot. The nature reserve sprawls over 130,000 hectares of terrain from forest to lagoons, though only two of the five zones are open to visitors. This makes leopard sightings hard enough to come by, and the presence of 700 vehicles a day in the park’s most popular Block 1 is not likely to improve the odds.

Nonetheless, Yala is a trove of natural beauty and wildlife. Over two days we spot a pair of bathing elephants, dozing crocodiles, thirsty water buffalo, herds of spotted deer, painted storks, wild boar and a sluggish monitor lizard that had us nearly rear-end another jeep to avoid running it over.