Yala National Park, today a place of natural wonders - CNN Traveller

Once off-limits to visitors, Sri Lanka's Yala National Park is today a place of natural wonders, CNN Traveller said.

The CNN Traveller magazine which calls itself the magazine for "People Going Places," has featured Sri Lanka's Yala National Park as a place of natural wonders in its January 2011 issue.

The feature article written by Daniel Nielson describes the writer's experiences in the island paradise from Yala in the deep South to Trincomalee in the East and his visits to famous Sigiriya and returning through the hill country to Galle, the colonial Dutch city in the southern coast.

The writer says that in May 2008 the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office(FCO) advice read,  “We advise against all travel to Yala National Park and the areas around it following a number of serious security incidents in the park in October and November 2007 and attacks in January 2008 close to the park.’   But before long, the FCO had retracted its warning about travelling to Trincomalee in the Tamil region of the north east and Yala National Park on the south coast and that Sri Lanka’s most visited tourist attraction was open again.

“After I cleared immigration at Bandaranaike International Airport, a sign greeted me: ‘Just arrived in the land of —– miracles’, the penultimate word covered in a patch of paper cello taped to the poster. We later learned that the president himself had demanded the word ‘small’ be covered up on all tourism literature. ‘It’s more than a small miracle,’ he argued, allegedly. He was right”,  Daniel Nielson wrote in his feature article describing the very first moment of his arrival at the Bandaranaike International Airport.

"The ever-positive Sri Lankans appear to have overcome terrible obstacles to protect this beautiful island and share it with visitors, and they continue to do so, but it will take more than serendipity," the writer wrote concluding the article.