I have seen plenty of Elephants during my travels. Unfortunately, most of the time they were either exploited for tourism purposes or treated with extreme care but still not free. 

This brought me to look for different experiences and the place I ended up in deserves to be mentioned. 

But lets start from the geography, we are in the southern centre of Sri Lanka, just on the flat of the mountains. Ahaspokuna bush-walk camp is a logistic miracle. It lays 2 kilometers from the main road, inside the jungle, and the only way in is by hiking. However, it has all the services you can think of. 

This campsite lays exactly where wild elephants, leopards, monkeys and many kind of birds live. The purpose of my journey was following the elephants footprints and try to spot them in their natural environment. 

A great team of naturalist was guiding me through the bush and we were basically following elephant’s dung and traces. 

However we had to be very careful, this huge animals are not the most kind in the world. Actually they can seriously charge anything that get too close. They are not used to the human presence as most of the one living in national parks are. 

We had to mind the wind, that of course was blowing in our direction, and wait until it changed.

In fact, elephants nostrils have a very low saturation threshold, they can smell up to 5 times better than humans and 2 times than dogs. They know where you are before you can even imagine they are there. 

Yet, the only threaten were not only elephants: Leeches are infesting the area. If you are not familiar with these creatures, they climb up your feet and legs while looking for a comfortable spot where to suck your blood. To prevent this, I have been given some peculiar socks which I wore each time I went bush camping.

Eventually, we managed to encounter two elephants and I could not be more excited. 

Think about the excitement when you get to see an Elephant and multiply it by thousands. 

This three days were pure adrenaline and the camping is really worth a try. 

For more details peer my youtube page.