Hating a wildlife park is childish, I know. But everyone has someone or something they hate for no good reason. I know a fellow blogger who hates a person for no reason what so ever. They may have not done anything personally to yous, but you just love to hate this person. You just find them to be the single most annoying, repulsive person on the face of this earth. You would give anything to punch them in their fat face and make them cry. Thats how we feel about wasgamuwa.
We can't just hate someone for no reason at all. Instead, we take some small incident and blow it completely out of proportion. At this point I won’t try to go into details , but I will throw out a few bullet points. First, there was no off-roading. Just miles and miles of bad road that go us no where. It took us almost 12 hours of driving to get there. Comparing with yala which is a pleasant 5 hour ride on good carpet roads this is hell. Ofcource there is no 'Riverston' on the way to yala with its misty hills and breath taking scenery.
Of course the bungalow was terrible. We would have got more privacy if it was on gall road. But nothing beats the drunken signing bungalow keepers we got last time. But this trip was much better than the last one. There dj's jeep broke 100m from when we took off, lost breaks and hit a bus. Then we had to wait hours till the insurance guy came. In the mean time we took the jeep to repair only to get bitten by dog. Hold on there is more, and no I didn't take this from some movie. So we had to send one guy to hospital. When he got there doctors were on strike.
But we held our nerve and kept going. It was almost ten in the night to when we reach the bungalow. When we got there we found out the bungalow keepers in a jolly mood. Then we had half cooked rice with uncooked veggies given by our jolly cook. Almost forgot. My friend DJ blacked out after drinking sprite. 'Sprite?' Yep, when have you ever heard anyone getting sick after drinking Sprite. It only happens in wasgamuwa.
Well I could go on and on about how all our jeeps got stuck in mud the first time and how we had no mud at all in the second. But that's not important. All you need is a small of opportunity to justify hate. We really hate wasgamuwa. That's why we have to go there again.
2 comments:
Hey man! don't hate any thing, when you hate some one or some thing it will be you who will suffer the most. Just try to forget and keep away from it. First of all you have to learn what off-roading is,in Sri Lankan context if feel that our people have limited it to mud, but it is not. When we are preparing a race track why do we dig bunny jumps, ditches, put up rock obstacles? simply because we want to create a miniatuer off road path together with a water crossing. This time we were expecting mud, but we didn't had but don't hate Wasgamuwa simply because of that. It has some of the best off-road tacks.
Driving is part of this adventure. True it's hard to drive to the top of the knuckles range and go all the way down again, but i'm sure you have to be lucky to see all that beauty the nature has to offer.
Wasgamuwa is rich in wildlife, you want see many tuskers in yala at one given time and elephants too...true i have seen 4 tuskers within few hours at yala and at same time haven't seen a single elephat once....:)
Well, i hope it's all good experience that we had with cooks and of course sprite...:)and its our team spirit and courage that took us there the first time with all obstacles we had:)
So keep your head up! We are going back.....:)
Hi,
I was quite surprised at this blog report hating wasgamuwa. This sounds quite immature and sound like a comment from a person who know or appreciates nothing about wildlife. Regarding your points, i am amused at the fact that you say there is no off roading. Can you please tell me which park allows going off road? There is none. and this is not the purpose of the park. Going off road will not only harm the park but also has chances of damagine and destroying parts of the natural habitat. Remember you are a visitor to this habitat, and the primary purpose is to protect its flora and fauna. Regarding the sightings, yala of course has more variety of big game due to them being used to vehicles. Remember yala of old was also not that fruitful as the animals were shy. You must appreciate all types of fauna. Wasgamuwa is a unique eco system, and I have come across several birds and small animals like Redfaced Malkoha, Mouse Deer, Blue faced Malkoha, coral snake etc whom are very rare and endemic.
So please stop the hate. its lame.
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