Gavin Thomas's article was published in RoughNews 24, which appeared in January 2005 immediately after the tsunami devastated parts of coastal Sri Lanka, including parts of Yala National Park. Since the disaster, Rough Guides has been working with Pearson (Rough Guides' owners) and AdoptSriLanka.com to help rebuild guesthouse businesses destroyed by the floods. Rough Guides encourages visitors to return to tsunami-affected parts of Asia as soon as local facilities are ready to receive them, which, in most areas, is now.

The monthly poya (full-moon) day was upon us again. Poya days are held sacred in Sri Lanka by the island’s Sinhalese Buddhists, who form the majority of the population, and are considered an occasion for religious contemplation, fasting and visits to the temple. Monks retire to their chapter houses to chant Buddhist scriptures and confess their sins, while little old ladies dress in their best white saris and visit the local shrine to pray and make offerings.

Young men, however, regard poya days principally as an excuse for a 24-hour binge – the quiet sound of one half of the island settling down to prayer and meditation is largely drowned out by the noise of the other half cracking open bottles of arrack and launching into alcohol-fuelled song. Sri Lankans love a party, and we had already seen a fair few local festivals, plus assorted weddings and birthday bashes, but for uninhibited, blood-curdling exuberance, nothing matched poya day in Tissa – an occasion more reminiscent of a raucous Latin American fiesta than a Buddhist religious holiday.

Establishing ourselves in a lakeside restaurant, we settled down to watch the fun from a safe distance. A crowd of local lads milling up and down the street suddenly burst into a medley of songs, delivered with enormous gusto (and unexpected tunefulness), accompanied by energetic rhythmic thumps on an empty petrol can. After about an hour they all started rushing about trying to rip each other’s sarongs off before jumping into the lake, splashing around crazily and trying to drown one another. By mid-afternoon every youth and every man under forty seemed to be either drenched, insensible, or both. Those who still commanded the use of their legs jumped on their bicycles and rode unsteadily around the lake ringing their bells and bellowing at one another, while everyone else piled into minibuses and roared off to the shrine at Kataragama to pay their slurred respects to the Lord Buddha. An uneasy silence descended, broken only by faint sounds of people falling off bicycles, or the distant splashes of others tumbling into the lake.

Perhaps not surprisingly, we seemed to be the first people awake in Tissa the next day, arriving early in the morning at Yala National Park, the most famous reserve in Sri Lanka, celebrated for its elephants, birdlife, bears, crocodiles and, especially, its leopards. Our allotted guide, Sarath, may well have had excellent wildlife-spotting credentials, though these were somewhat obscured by the fact that he was nursing a serious hangover.

We raced off into the park in a cloud of dust, whilst Sarath rubbed his brow, mumbling incoherently as we bumped past great flocks of brilliantly coloured birds and querulous monkeys, then subsiding slowly into a quiet stupor. Some time later a sudden squealing of brakes roused him. Sitting in the branches not five metres ahead a leopard regarded us with supreme disinterest, then descended gracefully from the branches and padded quietly off into the undergrowth, a superb flash of orange and black amidst the grey-green foliage.

We congratulated ourselves smugly on our absurd good fortune. Our driver grinned like a Cheshire cat and even Sarath managed a queasy smile. Buoyed by our unexpected success, I handed over a tip far larger than I had originally intended. Sarath looked at the banknote with bright eyes in which the promise of another hangover was already materializing, and staggered happily back to his village.