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East Asia

Sri Lanka - Yala National Park

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Yala National Park

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Heading further around the south coast we reached the first of the National Parks (Yala), famous for the variety of wildlife, in particular leopards.

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These thrive as there is a plenitude of prey including: rabbits; spotted deer; and young bore (piglets) not to mention those delicious peacocks, that have adorned many a royal table. Yet they do tend to flutter off.

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Buffalo; crocodiles (that seem to coexist); and elephants are probably an even tougher proposition for a quick snack.

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The Magampura Eco Village Resort is comfortable but like much of Sri Lanka, after the lean covid years, could use a bit of maintenance here and there.

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Throughout the country electricity distribution is well engineered, predominantly overhead lines on concrete poles, presumably because of the termites.

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High voltage transmission is at 220 KV and 132 KV. The local distribution grid is typically 11KV, dropping to 230/400 at 50 cycles for domestic use.

But we did experience several brief blackouts. I looked it up.

The IEA tells me: "Sri Lanka’s primary energy supply mainly comes from oil and coal. Almost 40% of Sri Lanka’s electricity came from hydropower in 2017 but coal’s shares in power generation has been increasing since 2010. Sri Lanka is reaching universal access to electricity but clean cooking remain an issue with 15 million people still relying on biomass to cook."

 

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