Elephant Complex

by John Gimlette

Nihal de Silva, the author of The Road From Elephant Pass, said that, during the civil war, Wilpattu was ‘a neutral zone where the army and rebels were present but did not really confront each other.’ This was to say nothing of the poachers, bandits, illegal loggers and deserters. Most of the park staff were murdered, and secret ammunition dumps still turn up from time to time. The area was so dangerous that, when de Silva’s novel was made into a film, it had to be shot in Malaysia. Not even the novelist himself survived this anarchy, and, in 2006, he was touring the park when his vehicle went over a pressure mine. The remains of that day, the deformed stumps of reddening metal, were still visible out in the long grass.

A dangerous place in Sri Lanka.