About this experience
Udawalawe National Park is the best-placed stage in Sri Lanka for watching wild elephants, and this full-day tour takes you there from Colombo with a chauffeur guide and a jeep safari included. The park sits on the boundary of the Uva and Sabaragamuwa provinces, on the line where Sri Lanka's wet and dry zones meet, a position that has made it one of the island's most reliable habitats for water birds and elephants and one of its most visited parks. It was established in 1972 as a sanctuary for animals displaced by the building of the Udawalawe Reservoir, and the land you drive through today, once worked by shifting cultivators, has returned to open grassland, scrub and marsh under the Department of Wildlife Conservation.
Your day begins with pickup at your Colombo hotel and a long drive south-east, through changing country as the wet-zone green gives way to the drier plains around the park. An air-conditioned vehicle and an English-speaking chauffeur guide cover the road portion of the journey; at the park you transfer into an open-sided 4x4 safari jeep for a three-hour drive along the dirt tracks that cross the reserve's grassland and scrub, with forest holding the horizon on most sides.
Elephants are what people come for, and Udawalawe rarely disappoints: family groups moving along the tracks, calves walking close beside their mothers, solitary bulls out in the open grassland, often close enough for a clear photograph from the jeep without disturbing them. Water birds are part of the park's identity too, drawn by the reservoir and its margins, and your driver-guide will watch for whatever else crosses your path that day, from other mammals to reptiles and butterflies in the undergrowth.
This is a long day rather than a short excursion, built around an early start and a late return, with the safari itself forming the three-hour centrepiece in the middle. It suits travellers who want to see Udawalawe properly, without rushing the road or the drive through the park, and who are content to spend most of the day travelling in order to spend a focused stretch of it among elephants in open country.
The tour is arranged as a private booking, so your vehicle, your chauffeur and your pace are yours alone, with a minimum age of seven for those joining the safari jeep. Hotel pickup and drop-off in Colombo, the air-conditioned road transport, the chauffeur guide and the safari jeep for the three-hour drive are all part of the day; food, drink, personal expenses, gratuities and the park's own entrance tickets are arranged separately.
