This was a busy day – and it was not over yet.

After we had climbed down Sigiriya again, we made our way for a restaurant for a late lunch; after lunch we swapped our bus with 4WDs and continued for a game drive in Kaudulla National Park.

We soon discovered, what the park is famous for: the elephants. We saw hundreds of those, including many tuskers (i.e. elephants with tusks; not so easy to spot in Sri Lanka, as only about 5% of the male population have tusks here) – so very lucky. We were also lucky with the weather (as already for the whole day) – blue skies mingling with some very photogenic clouds – a perfect day for elephant watching.

The real fun part of the game drive – however – was the way back. With many of the roads in the park flooded, the way back turned into a 4WD mud fight – with loads of ups and downs beside the road and many of those downs straight into another pool of mud; driving obviously included loads of drifting (any direction) – – the experience overall felt a bit like a hectic roller coaster or log flume ride in an amusement park – not to mention, that is was great fun 😉