Safaris in Sri Lanka - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

As promised, this post is part brag about an incredible safari experience, and part 'looking back we can laugh about it' rant about a disastrous one!

We took two safaris in Sri Lanka - one in Udawalawe National Park, the other in Yala National Park. Perhaps if we'd taken the one in Yala first, we wouldn't have been so down on it compared to Udawalawe, but if I'm honest there was enough in there that didn't sit right that, if we'd done Yala first, it probably would have put us off Udawalawe.

What am I even talking about? Let me explain.

1. Udawalawe National Park

We hadn't even scheduled a trip to Udawalawe into our itinerary, but the local guide we met in Mirissa insisted that we wouldn't regret giving it a go. As he'd shown us two amazing temples already that day we decided to trust him. We showed up at Udawalawe to find a few safari guides waiting and not many tourists, so we were able to get a jeep all to ourselves. This is the first thing that made Udawalawe special for us - we were able to ask our guide to stop whenever we wanted, instead of having to compromise with other tourists also riding with us.

Udawalawe is a much smaller park than Yala, and famous for its Indian elephants. Smaller park plus lots of elephants meant that no matter where we drove, there was always copious wildlife to see. We even had a few road blocks with elephants so relaxed, they just wandered up to our jeep, nosed around and then wandered off. A highlight for me was driving by a watering hole and watching a baby elephant galumphing around for a while before being told off by his mum. We saw plenty of other wildlife too - our guide noticed the tiniest birds, lizards and mammals and stopped to let us see them, telling us exactly what they were.

The whole safari was truly magical (I'm not exaggerating) from start to end, and our guide was just as enthusiastic about the animals as we were, despite presumably seeing them every day!

Close encounters of the elephant kind

So many elephants at Udawalawe!

2. Yala National Park

The very next day, we joined our pre-booked safari to Yala National Park, booked through our guesthouse, in fact. This one started at 5am and we were sharing the jeep with another couple from South Africa.

Yala is known for its leopards, and any sighting of one is treated very seriously by the guides. Our guide, who looked almost too young to be driving, received a phone call from a fellow guide while heading to the Park tipping him off about a leopard sighting, so he picked up the speed and we shot our way towards Yala. Luckily, there wasn't much traffic on the road that early in the morning!

We arrived at Yala and continued to speed our way through the park to where the leopard had been sighted an hour before, ignoring a bunch of other animals along the way. After our relaxed safari the day before, this was already a bit stressful!

We got to the site of the leopard sighting, to find at least a hundred other jeeps already parked up there. On speaking to those around us, we learned that the leopard had been glimpsed in the distance an hour ago, and hadn't been seen since. And yet, everyone was still sitting there. And sitting there. And sitting there.

Yes, it would be great to see a leopard in its natural habitat, but with a limited time to explore the park and no real proof that the leopard was still in the area, this seemed like a bit of a futile venture. Presumably a leopard, on seeing the hundred other jeeps parked up nearby, would have headed off for a quieter place anyway!

We dared to suggest that maybe we could go and have a look at some of the other animals in the park, and were shot down with fury from our fellow passengers! Oops!

Eventually, though, with no more leopards in sight, we did move off. Our driver, though, had some interesting ideas about what we'd enjoy, and took us on the hunt for the park's most famous elephant, an enormous male with lethal tusks. Why is he famous, I hear you ask? Oh, because he's particular aggressive towards tourists, known for charging at jeeps.

"I really want to get close to that aggressive elephant!", said nobody in our jeep, but it happened anyway. We came upon another crowd of jeeps who had found our aggressive elephant, and were engaging in a terrifying game of chicken that involved getting as close to the elephant as possible, waiting until he started to charge, and then reversing as quickly as possible down the track. I don't know what planet these safari 'guides' were living on, but to us this was a) not only ridiculously dangerous for all the people involved but also b) cruel and stressful to the elephant. He wouldn't be charging if he wasn't being aggressively cornered by fifteen jeeps, would he?

Patrick and I had to practically yell at our guide before he would stop playing chicken with a full grown elephant. Our fellow passengers decided to weigh in and told us to "relax", as if animal cruelty and near-death experiences are something to be chill about!

Our driver seemed to be uninterested in seeing any other wildlife in the park, and he spent the rest of the tour barrelling along the potholed trail really only made for slow speeds, ignoring our requests to stop so we could actually - you know - see the animals. Yala is a much bigger park than Udawalawe, meaning the wildlife is a lot more spread out and sightings are more infrequent - but when we did see an animal, we rarely stopped! As a result, I have not one single photo from Yala National Park! Not one!

The final nail in the coffin for this tour was the return journey. Let me start by saying that our jeep was open and didn't have seatbelts, designed for slow speeds within the park only. We'd allowed our driver to speed this morning, excited for a potential leopard sighting, but when he began to speed just as fast (if not faster) home, too, we got a little worried. We were bouncing all over the place, overtaking into oncoming traffic and skidding round sharp corners like crazy. We politely asked if we could slow down, to no effect. We asked again - nothing. We only slowed down, in the end, because our driver took a corner so aggressively that he BROKE ONE OF THE WHEELS! On a bend! With oncoming traffic! I thought I was going to die.

By the time we got home, we were fuming. And so thankful that we'd been to Udawalawe the day before, otherwise I think our Yala experience would have put us off safaris for life.

So this might not be the most unbiased, balanced review of Sri Lanka's National Parks...but it's possibly the truest!

To finish with, here's another photo from Udawalawe, just to cheer me up!

Look at her happy little face!