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Yala National Wildlife Preserve, Sri Lanka

SL Elephant

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SL Elephant- After the miserable failure in February 2001 to see SL wild elephants at YALA National Wildlife Reserve, i was hoping that i would atleast see one wild elephant on this tip. It was very rewarding when we encountered this male tusker eating at about 0900hrs on 01/31/01. He was about 15 years old and one of only 15 tuskers out of 250 elephants in the park. He did not pay any attention to us and continued to move as he eat. If you look closely, you will see earth on the elephant's back which is "natural sunscreen" that elphants throw on themeseleves to protect themseleves from the harshness of the hot sun beating down upon their black bodies.We kept up with him for about 15 minutes and i managed to get a bunch of shots off. Here are 3 such shots I took in this encounter. He moved with grace and absolute disregard to us. At one point he approached our jeep to with 3 feet to pass between the jeep and a tree. He got soo close that i coud not focus my camera to take the still shots. I have video,too if anybody is interested in seeing of more of this encounter--Suresh

SL Monitor Lizard

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SL Monitor Lizard- As the sun rose in the morning sky and the day got hotter, we started encountering monitor lizards on rock,trees and road just sapping up hte sun's rays. These cretures were very large. some were as long as 6 feet 9head to tail). While we navigated around them, they kept one eye (moncular vison) focused upon us --Suresh

SL Leopard