About this experience
Udawalawe National Park sits on the boundary of the Sabaragamuwa and Uva Provinces in the south of Sri Lanka, a landscape of open grassland, marsh, thorn scrub, and dry evergreen forest gathered around the broad Udawalawe Reservoir on the Walawe River. The park was established in 1972 — the fifth national park declared in Sri Lanka — with the specific purpose of providing a sanctuary for wild animals displaced by the construction of the reservoir, and to protect its catchment. Today it is one of the country's most reliable places to watch Sri Lankan elephants in the open, where herds of fifty or sixty animals are a routine rather than a rare sighting.
This is a private, full-day tour that begins with a hotel pick-up from Dikwella, a coastal town on Sri Lanka's southern shore, at midday. Your driver brings you inland through the Sri Lankan countryside, arriving at the park in the early afternoon. Inside the park, you transfer to a licensed safari jeep whose driver doubles as your tracker — someone who reads the landscape, the waterhole edges, and the distant treelines, and positions the vehicle quietly when something worth watching is close. The three-hour jeep safari takes you across the park's red-earth tracks, past the reservoir banks where crocodiles bask in the shallows, through the open grasslands that were once chena farmland before the park's designation, and along the marshes where water birds gather. Elephants are the headline, but the grasslands and reservoir edges also produce spotted deer, jackal, mongoose, water buffalo, and large wading birds at the water's margins. The peacock — a bird that walks these grasslands with an indifference to human observers — is a common and striking encounter.
The park itself covers just over thirty thousand hectares, and the open, relatively flat terrain means that wildlife is genuinely visible rather than merely present. The Sri Lankan elephant seen here is a recognised subspecies of the Asian elephant, and the Udawalawe population is notable for its size and its tolerance of jeep traffic. Near the park entrance, the Elephant Transit Home has operated since 1995 as a rehabilitation centre for orphaned elephant calves, reintroducing them to the wild — a facility that is separate from the safari but worth knowing exists in the area.
The tour is arranged as a private experience: the vehicle is not shared with other groups. Your English-speaking driver is with you throughout the day, from hotel pick-up to the return to Dikwella in the early evening. A litre of bottled water per person is provided. Park entrance fees are managed separately and are set annually by the Department of Wildlife Conservation; when you book, you can select whether to include park tickets or arrange them independently. Gratuities are at your discretion. Food and drinks and personal expenses are outside the scope of the tour. Children of five and above are welcome.
