Every year during the months of August and September, one of the most awesome wildlife spectacles in the world takes place in Sri Lanka. Over three hundred wild elephants converge for the famous ‘gathering’. Nowhere else in the world will one find such a high concentration of wilds Asian elephants within few square kilometers.
It occurs in around the ancient reservoir Minneriya,
picturesque when it is brimful all 6300 acres. When standing on the bund and
looking across the vast sheet of water one sees the distant mountains and the
jungle below in true verdant splendor. However soon after the south west
monsoon and water given for irrigation, Minneriya is left with less than one
fourth its surface area of water. Then the exposed tank bed becomes grassland.
This is when Minneriya offers its most spectacular sight. This is when The Gathering
takes place.
During the morning hours the herds lie hidden in the deep
forest that lie on the edge of the plains and go right up into the nearby hills.
Then about three o’ clock in the afternoon they emerge in to the open plains
and once again the drama of the ‘Gathering’ takes place in all its glory. The ‘Gathering’
takes place every year for about two and a half months to three. Then as the
first drops of rain of the north east monsoon falls the ‘Gathering’ gets
agitated. As the rain increases the members of the individual herds gather together
and then slowly make their way back to their home ranges. The bulls, the loners
make their separate ways. Very soon, except for a few stranglers the plains of Minneriya
lie deserted. As the monsoon increases slowly and Minneriya returns to its
rippling glory.
Image courtesy of - Wikipedia Commons
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