Sri Lanka Tuk Tuk Safari - Arugam Bay

After getting back from a surf, our Tuk Tuk driver said "I know a secret spot, we can see lots of elephants". I was of course very excited and said we would love to. Gayan our driver looked at our jandles, "Bring proper shoes not sandles", "why?" we asked. "You find out later" he said with a smile on his face.

He came to pick us up a while later and took us 10 minutes out of town along a dirt road, we saw several other tuk tuks pulled over on the side of the road and Gayan told us to come with him. I did not see the crocodiles to the side of the road in the river until we came back! He took us across a small stream and into a rice field, about 200 metres away there was a herd of elephants. I eagerly started taking photos but Gayan kept walking for us to follow, we ended up about 50 metres away and Gayan told me to get on some high ground to get some good photos, I nervously took them, the elephants seemed to be looking right at us. Eventually the elephants walked away from us into the bush.

We then went back across more rice fields where we could see monkeys running into the trees for the evening. Gayan took us through some trees, while walking through we could hear elephants crashing through the trees to our right. We came out to a clearing where a lone elephant was walking back and forth. "This elephant crazy! If he charge climb this tree" was the advice of our guide. Fortunately he left before we had to resort to climbing the tree.

We were then very lucky to spot a tusked elephant, apparently they are very rare in Sri Lanka. I was still very scared about the 'crazy' elephant returning and so was struggling to get a good picture (I took about 6 and all but one were horribly blurry!).

Once we escaped the trees and were out on the plains we saw a huge group of over 50 elephants that had gathered by the lake for the evening. It was a stunning evening and I was very happy with the pictures we got but I was not going again in a hurry!