Yala After the Rain

The rains had been heavy for a week. The park closed for two days; the roads softened, the tracks washed clean. On the morning it opened again, we were second in the queue at the gate.

Everything inside was new. Dust gone. Light cleaner. The scrub had thickened overnight, and the watering holes — which had been bone in September — held water past their banks. The deer stood deeper into the open than they would have a week earlier.

We tracked elephants for the first hour, then peacocks, then nothing in particular. By eight, the air was warm enough to lift the steam off the wet earth. A young sloth bear crossed the track at a distance, paused once to look at the jeep, and continued without urgency.

What we didn't see, that morning, was a leopard. Not a track, not a call. The flush of green and water meant the prey was scattered, the cover was thick, and the cats had less reason to come to the open road.

There's a tendency — in safari guiding, in tourism, in photography — to count the day by what was sighted. By that count, this was a poor drive.

It wasn't. It was Yala on a morning it doesn't show very often: clean, wet, breathing. The pictures we brought home were of light and ground, not animals. They're still some of the best we've shot.

— Amavin