I am a Sri Lankan currently living in the US. I have had several wildlife/birding/photography tours in Sri Lanka over the past couple of years, some self-organized and some through local tour companies. This is the first time I have had the fortune to do a dedicated bird-photography tour with Walk With Jith. Having read the great reviews on the web about the quality of the tours offered by Walk With Jith, I picked them with a lot of expectations.....
After my solo Panama trip (which was rather rough - with me getting 2 diseases and missing the main target bird by a shave), it was a nice change to have hired a private guide to organize everything for us and do all the driving, and to sleep in actual hotels without risking exposure to parasitic diseases, etc. Ramata found us a great outfit called "walk with Jith" and superstar guide Thilina Karunanayaka for this laid back yet somewhat hardcore birding and cultural tour.
DOF-Travel, Birdlife Denmark, has this year two trips to Sri Lanka. One in January and one in February. As tourleader for trip 1, 16 days in January 2019, I hereby give our agency in Sri Lanka – Walk-With-Jith – our greatest recommendations.
This was our first trip to Sri Lanka,as we did not have many days to spend, we just decided to visit Yala National Park. We engaged the tour company, Walk With Jith for our pick up from Colombo, drop off at Cinnamon Wild Hotel and the next day full day safari at Yala National Park.
Hi Jith and Hetti. You may have thought I have forgotten about you but I haven’t. Since we were with you last year in March and April we have been traveling extensively. That has resulted in being very backlogged in processing photos from our trips. You may recall that even before our visit to Sri Lanka we were in Ethiopia, Egypt, U.A.E., Maldives, and Kerala and Tamil Nadu in Southern India. On the total trip I took about 80,000 photos of which about 15,000 were in Sri Lanka alone...
e would like to thank you for the beautifull trip we made in March, and the excellent guidance by Hetti during our vacation.
I posted a series of 4 video’s on you tube in which your company is mentioned.
If you find it usefull to refer to these on your web site, feel free.
Having been to several parts of the Indian Subcontinent on previous trips, Louise and I decided it was time to visit Sri Lanka. We contacted Manoj Vardhan at Vardhan's Individual and Group Tours (VIGT), who had put five trips together for us before, and he liaised with Prasanjith (“Jith”) Caldera of 'Walk With Jith' to act as our ground agent.
Tilbage i 1985 havde DOF sin første tur til Sri Lanka. Men det var først efter en succesrig tur i januar 2015, at den her næsten identiske tur blev afholdt allerede et år senere. Det blev igen særdeles vellykket, og hvordan kunne det også blive andet, når programmet bød på rundtur i dette smukke, grønne land med de store landskabelige kontraster. Lokalarrangøren var også denne gang det meget velfunderede, WalkWithJith, med dygtige guider og med kontakter til de rigtige hoteller på ruten. Logier og mad var derfor så godt, som man kan tillade sig at forvente, når det skulle være med en fornuftig økonomi, og når vi også ville ud til nogle af afkrogene med de rigtige fuglesteder...
Foto Niels Henrik: Gruppen med guider - tidlig morgen parat til Sinharaja NP
Sri Lanka birding and Wildlife Trip from Dec 26’2015 to Jan 09’2016
Gary Yang and Loretta Kao
From Taipei, Taiwan
Day 1: 12/26:因為原本規劃行程被取消,在最短時間內改變去了從沒想過會去的地方-斯里蘭卡.第一天行程輕鬆行主要拜訪佛牙寺，無奈我們一早從可倫坡機場附近酒店開來康堤就花了六小時（按正常約3小時），其實實際上距離只有116公里是因爲遇上連續假期共四天（斯里蘭卡是沒有任何高速公路）大家都出來玩了。中間我們停車在路邊看到樹上吊滿了水果蝙蝠fruit bat，遠遠望去會誤認為大片樹葉。後來到達康堤更發現原來這些蝙蝠是非常普遍在一般平原，甚至市區都易見。祂真的很大隻，飛起來展翅可達3英尺，除了停棲在樹上，也有不少掛在電線上。好不容易到達飯店，鳥導給我們兩小時休息時間，我們當然不會錯過任何可以拼鳥的機會，短短兩小時就已經入袋：長嘴吸蜜鳥，紫腰吸蜜鳥，白胸翡翠，白腰紋鳥，紅胸紋鳥，黑頭黃鸝，小PT,小鸕鶿、印度池鷺，黃頭鷺，小白鷺，白腹秧雞，珠頸斑鳩，小金背三趾啄木，金額葉鵯，白腹卷尾，烏鴉，家八哥，印度白頭鶇鶥，下午四點下午四點離開民宿看5；30的民族舞蹈，那些舞者演出出的力與美真是賞心悅目。之後的fire walk 就與我們的乩童有異曲同工之趣。今天的壓軸就是去參觀佛牙寺真是人山人海，裝佛牙的佛龕ㄧ天只開放兩小時，早上與傍晚的各6:30-7:30，而佛龕真正打開是7點整，我們鳥導太厲害了，我們擠到佛龕前看到打開真是太感動了。而那短短幾分鐘就已經讓信眾瘋狂了，但也看見相當多的人默默坐在地上虔誠膜拜。雖然塞車花了大半時間，但還真是豐收的ㄧ天。計：19種
Have you ever wished that you could escape the troubles of the world? Just forget all your worries and vanish into utopia… well, that was exactly what we did at the close of 2015 on our week-long Sri Lankan nature sojourn.
... Fra den 10. - 25. januar 2015 afholdt DOF Travel sin første tur til Sri Lanka siden 1985.
Turen, der blev gennemført i samarbejde med fugle- og naturguider fra det lokale firma WalkWithJith, blev en ubetinget succes. Ejeren af firmaet Jith blev sekunderet af den ligeledes rutinerede guide Upali, så vi var godt dækket ind. De to guider, ofte hjulpet af andre lokale guider, gjorde et stort arbejde, og det lykkedes da også for dem at vise os samtlige 33 endemiske fuglearter, som findes på øen.
Fly fra Qatar Air med fremragende service om bord stod Viatravel for.
Rundturen i bus foregik i strålende sol med dagtemperaturer på op over de +30gr.C. Kun oppe i regnskoven fik vi nogle kraftige aftenbyger, og morgentemperaturen i højlandet kunne snige sig ned på små +10grC. ...
Just back from my trip with Mark Edgeller and Ollie Wardman, and it was a good one. We had some poor weather but not enough to spoil things and it allowed us to see all 33 endemics plus take a half-day whale watching trip in just 9 days:
