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# Land of Lakes
- URL: https://tombrewer.co.uk/land-of-lakes/
- Published: 2026-04-10T05:45:18.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-21T09:30:27.000Z
- Author: Tom Brewer
- Tags: Newsletter, #Migrated-1789982889005, #Import 2026-09-21 09:29

Sri Lanka’s largest national park is also its oldest. Wilpattu means land of lakes, a reference to the villus, shallow, sand-rimmed basins that fill with rainwater and draw wildlife to their edges throughout the dry season. The park sits in the northwest, 180 kilometres from Colombo. This is where Prince Vijaya, the semi-mythological founder of the Sinhalese nation, is said to have landed in the sixth century BC; the ruins of his consort Kuweni’s palace still sit within the park boundary at Kali Villu. It was declared a sanctuary in 1905, a national park in 1938, and then closed entirely for the better part of two decades when the civil war’s frontline moved through it. It reopened in 2005.

![](https://tombrewer.co.uk/content/images/2026/09/38b26ca7-94c5-4a89-8560-a98bbdc8111f_2048x1365-jpeg-1.jpg)

Before we’d even got into the jeep, we had a sighting most wildlife enthusiasts would consider the worth the trip in itself. A black-backed dwarf kingfisher, injured, grounded, absurdly vivid, not far from our camp. I’d spent years in the UK trying and mostly failing to photograph the ironically named common kingfisher. Here they were a fixture, white-throated varieties perched opportunistically over the villus, scanning the water.

![](https://tombrewer.co.uk/content/images/2026/09/7b0d5b3f-a4a8-4240-8cd5-cb9e439aff2e_2048x1365-jpeg.jpg)

The first afternoon in the park I was struggling: some kind of flu that had caught up with me on the road. I was finding it hard to share our driver’s enthusiasm for the leopard hunt. Wilpattu is known for them. Everyone who comes here is after them. I was bouncing around in the back, half-present, wondering if I’d made a mistake, when the animal locked eyes with me from the scrubland and the question became irrelevant. There is something primeval about it: the tracking, the waiting, the false starts, more waiting. We were not after a trophy. A sighting was enough. Though it was sobering to learn how much pressure the park’s leopards are still under from poachers; that the years of closure had hollowed out populations that are only now recovering, and that the recovery is not guaranteed. We also found elephants in the dense jungle, heard before they were seen, dust-bathing and pulling at branches in the midday heat.

![](https://tombrewer.co.uk/content/images/2026/09/f83be9de-6e47-4328-aeb8-6091b0e3777f_3120x2080-jpeg.jpg)

The next day, my birthday, we spent the better part of 11 hours in the back of the 4x4: brown fish owl, Malabar pied hornbill, serpent eagle, changeable hawk eagle, a family of jackals cooling off by the swamp in the flat noon light.

![](https://tombrewer.co.uk/content/images/2026/09/d20e5668-f30f-4e8f-b369-28faa76d9392_2048x1365-jpeg.jpg)

We went back to the previous day’s spot, hoping the leopard cubs might show. They didn’t. We turned for the main road as the light dropped, ready to call it, and then the leopard was there on the track ahead of us; the same animal, crossing in its own time, unhurried and unbothered.

![](https://tombrewer.co.uk/content/images/2026/09/b45f730b-afcb-4b31-852f-7d09ddfc8c20_1365x2048-jpeg.jpg)

At the park entrance there is a sign beside a photograph of a leopard. It reads: perhaps you might not see me, but don’t be disappointed. I’ve seen you.