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This is a full day's safari into Yala National Park, arranged from Ella with the vehicle and the jeep both taken care of. Yala sits on Sri Lanka's southeastern coast and is the country's second largest national park, a stretch of dry monsoon forest, open grassland and rocky outcrops that runs down to the Indian Ocean. It is the most visited park on the island, and for good reason: Block 1, where the game drives concentrate, is reckoned to hold one of the highest densities of leopards anywhere in the world, with sightings reported at roughly one animal per square kilometre.
A chauffeur collects you from your hotel in Ella and drives you down to the park in an air-conditioned vehicle, with an English-speaking driver throughout. At Yala you transfer into an open-sided safari jeep for a three-hour drive through the park's dry-zone scrub and grassland, working the tracks and waterholes where sightings tend to cluster. The Sri Lankan leopards here have grown used to vehicles over the years and are often seen resting in daylight on the rocky outcrops that punctuate the landscape, or moving low through dry grass beside the thorn brush.
Beyond the leopards, Yala's waterholes draw elephant herds, with calves often among them, along with spotted deer gathering to drink at the muddy edges. Peacocks display in the forest clearings, and the park's bird list runs past two hundred species, alongside crocodiles, wild water buffalo, sloth bears and wild boar sharing the same terrain. The landscape itself is part of the appeal: flat, lightly undulating country where forest gives way suddenly to open grassland or a cluster of granite rocks rising out of the scrub.
The day runs for around eight hours door to door, built around the three-hour jeep safari at its centre, with transport, chauffeur and the safari jeep driver all included. Food, drinks, gratuities and personal expenses are not part of the arrangement, so it is worth carrying both for the day. This is a private tour, suited to a minimum age of five, so it travels at your own pace rather than alongside strangers.
