Yala Block 1 has the highest recorded density of wild leopards per square kilometre of any national park in the world – which means that with a private jeep, a pre-dawn entry and a dedicated wildlife naturalist who knows the park’s individual leopard territories by name, a sighting is not a hope but a statistical likelihood. The pre-dawn entry at the gate opening is the correct way to experience Yala: the first two hours after the light arrives, when the scrub is cool and quiet and the park belongs almost entirely to its animals, are when the most extraordinary encounters happen. Beyond the leopard – the wildlife itself is honest about unpredictability, and that is exactly the point – Yala offers wild elephants, sloth bears in the dry scrub, mugger crocodiles at the water’s edge, painted storks and flamingos in the coastal lagoon habitats of the park’s southern boundary. This is not a zoo. Nothing is guaranteed. That is what makes it extraordinary.