Returning recently after a visit to the Ruhuna (Yala) National Park, where the visual pickings were meagre, my thoughts turned to the Vilpattu National Park which has been closed for several years owing to the north-east war.

Damaged skull of rogue elephant seen in the Maradanmaduwa office, pierced by the Manikkapola tusker.

115 miles from Colombo and 18 miles from Anuradhapura, Vilpattu is the biggest national park in this country covering around 500 sq. miles.

From a game sanctuary in 1909 it was redesignated a national park in 1938, and since the 1950s was developed and transformed into a first class wildlife showcase.

Vilpattu will always he my park par excellence because of its unique landscape of around 30 freshwater lakes called vila in Sinhalese and villu in Tamil. These sand-rimmed lakes surrounded by grass and high forest are where the animals and birds are best seen.

Kumbukwila and Nelunwila in particular are a bird watchers' paradise. In the middle of the lakes are painted stork, grey heron, cormorants and darters, while lapwing, plover and blue coot rummage among the reeds nearer the edge. Duck godwit and sandpipers are winter visitors from October to April. We were allowed to get down from our vehicles there to study the birds.

On the top-most branches of the trees in the forest are hornbills who attract a lot of attention because of their comical looks and loud metallic voices. Comical they may look but strict husbands they are, locking their mates within clay walls in their hollow tree trunk nests until the eggs are hatched and the young ready to fly.

The inmates are fed through a hole in the clay wall. Pig, deer and leopard frequent the lakes. Elephants are less frequent preferring the Pomparippu plain and the open areas around the Kala-oya. Vilpattu has the largest concentration of leopard in this country - sixty of them we were told when he last visited in the 1970s.

At that time there was a most obliging leopard in Borupan who was not at all shy to show himself

We had the good fortune to meet up with him sprawled across the jeep track.

Our jeep drew up right behind him but the beast did not budge. He looked scornfully over his shoulder and continued to roll over and over in the sand, scratching his body and chasing his tail.

Occasionally he would stop to glare at us, and finally stretching like a house-cat he moved slowly into the trees master of all he surveyed, confident that no other creature in the forest would touch him.

Our guide commented that Mr Spots must obviously have eaten well to give us such a performance that had lasted ten minutes or more.

He was right. We could get the putrefying stench of the leopard's 'kill' stashed in a tree nearby. It is strange that leopards relish tainted meat.

But fortunately for them they have a poor sense of smell.

There is an interesting exhibit of a pierced elephant skull in the Maradanmaduwa office. The story behind it is that a rogue elephant, suffering from festered gun shot wounds, had entered the park, and in its demented state had clashed with the Manikkapola tusker. After a terrific fight where the two beasts butted each other, the tusker put the rogue out of his misery with a tremendous thrust to the head. The skull shows a wide fracture at the top of the cranium where one of his tusks had made contact.

Apart from its wonderful lakes and sumptuous repository of wildlife, Vilpattu also has something to offer in the way of legend.

On the western perimeter of the park overlooking the sea is Mount Kudremalai, at the foot of which was an ancient harbour.

Legend claims that the first settlers from India (Prince Vijaya and followers) disembarked there and reached the hinterland through forest tracks in Vilpattu. On the way they encountered the sorceress Kuveni by name. Next to the Kalivillu bungalow in the park are some ruins of stone pillars and guardstones that are spuriously referred to as Kuveni's temple.

More ruins may be seen near the Kokmotte bungalow. The road to Kokmotte traverses bear country, and I can still picture vividly in my mind the sight of a mother bear waddling along with a cub riding piggyback.

At a place called Ochappu Kallu (leaning stone) there are heaps of pillars, leaning, fallen down and erect. There are also inscriptions said to date back to the second century BC.

And there's Tantrimalai which now lies within the area of the park that was added in 1969. It is where the royal procession conducting Sangamitta Theri with the Sri Maha Bodhi sapling stayed overnight on the way to Anuradhapura.

A large shrine was later built there to mark the occasion. All that is left of it is a vandalised reclining image of the Buddha about 10 metres long, and Bodhi tree said to have been raised from a sprout taken from the Sri Maha Bodhi in Anuradhapura.

Yes indeed my reminiscences of Vilpattu are still evergreen. And uppermost in my mind at the moment is the question of when this park be reopened to the public, now that the peace process is gaining ground.

We need a welcome change of scene where national parks are concerned. Vilpattu is the answer, where a visitor can be more or less assured of a visual bag of leopard, bear, deer, pig, elephant may be, and so much bird life in a single day.(Source: CDN)