Day 1:
Guests arrived 11.30am to lodge today. After welcome briefing & introducing the lodge staff, guest went to their chalets at the river front. Before we started our first game drive guests had the Lunch about 1pm. We went Wilpattu national park for our first safari and it was great.
Guests enjoyed rich wildlife (flora & fauna)in Wilpattu. We had really good sightings of lot of endemic birds including Sri Lankan grey horn bills, Malabar Hornbill, Indian Pita and Paradise fly catcher. Also we saw many spotted deer, wild buffalo, variety of monkeys, wild boar to mention only a few. We stayed at the park till 6pm and got back to lodge 6.30and guest had their dinner around 7.15pm.
Day 2:
Today we start our activity 5.30am in the morning with coffee, tea and a packed breakfast. It was slight longer than two hours’ drive to Sigiriya Rock World Heritage site (5th century AD). We started the hike up the Sigiriya Rock about 8.20am visiting the various ancient sites on the way up including the lions paw before reaching the summit. It was a beautiful sunny day and not very busy with tourists at the top. We spent about 15/20 minutes there taking photos. On the way down saw mirror wall graffiti’s (written on 6-8 century AD). Also we saw remaining Sigiriya Frescoes at a cave. We got down about 11.15am.
After that we went to Lunch at a tropical village restaurant at Dambulla. After lunch we went to Eco park Habarana. Our second safari started around 2pm. We got to see a small group of Elephants not far from gate after entering to the park and one female elephant charged our jeep. We saw several different herds of Asian Elephants with babies throughout the afternoon until we left at 5:00 pm. After the safari we got back to the lodge about 7pm.
Day 3:
Today bit of a relaxing day, we let the Guests to sleep in. Before breakfast we went on the bird trails around the Safari Lodge property. Guests had their breakfast 9am.after breakfast guests spent their time at the pool. About 1.30 after lunch they watched monkey kingdom movie. Late afternoon we went for a small work in the village just see rural life of Sri Lanka.
Guests had their dinner around 7pm.
Day 4:
After breakfast we departed to Polonnaruwa, on the way we stopped at Anuradapura ancient city 3rd BC to 10th century AD. we visited Isurumuniya temple, Jaya Sri Maha Bodiya,Ruwanweli maha seya Thuparamaya (first ever Stupa in Sri Lanka) Gests had their lunch at the Rajarata hotel. We saw another Elephants while driving to Polonnaruwa and checked in to Deer park Hotel Girithale about 3.30pm.
After giving the guests a rest and time to re-fresh, we went to Monkey research Center about 6pm to do the Loris tour. During the tour we saw 5 Lories. We got a one Loris really close encounter. We could manage to get good pictures too, tour was ended about 8pm we returned to the Deer Park Hotel and had the dinner.
Day 5:
Today the sky was bit of overcast, after breakfast we left the hotel about 8.15am and headed to the Polonnaruwa archeological site (10th century AD to 13th century BC) also known as Monkey Kingdom. First we went to find all three types monkeys, we manage to see macaque monkey not far from Vijayabahu palace. About 30 monkeys was there. More than 20 minutes we spent there. Guests took many pictures. Then we went to Manik vehera, on a way to there we got good sighting of Purple face Langer monkeys small pack about 7 to 10 with a new born young monkey. After that also we saw Black Face Langers. 15 to 20 monkeys near Manik wehera. After we saw all three type of monkeys we went to Gal Vihara (12th century AD).
After that we had lunch at the priyamali restaurant, where we had our traditional Sri Lankan lunch. We drove back to the lodge after lunch.
Day 6:
We went on our last safari in the early morning today. It was great start. We were so lucky we saw a leopard hunt a deer today, we spent about 30 minutes there, she was on a tree by the time we spotted her, after she went down from the tree other side of the road, she successfully brought down a young deer. That was not an easy to see in the jungle, but very exciting. Also we saw another three leopards (mom and two clubs). We spent more than 7 hours in the park.
We got back to the lodge 1pm and had lunch and whole after noon guest had their time at the pool. After dinner around (11pm) guest went to airport.
