Safari of your life in Udawalawe National Park

If you don’t care about the wild animals or you are careless about their well being when visiting zoos, this post isn’t for you. But if you do, once in your life you need to go for a safari in this National Park. You have 99% chance of spotting an elephant and it is one of the world’s best places to see wild elephants, while during our 3 safaris we were lucky enough to see more than 50!

WHAT WILL YOU SEE ON SAFARI?

• Elephants, elephants and more elephants. They’re attracted to the Park, coz of the Udawalawe reservoir which convinced 250 to become permanent residents!
• Wild cats: rusty spotted cat, fishing cat and Sri Lankan leopard. We didn’t get to see any, yet the first one is not such a rare animal to spot in a safari. Yet we got to see fresh footprints of a leopard mama with the cubs.
• Numerous deer, buffalos enjoying the little lakes and running around freely.
• So many birds! Definitely a paradise for bird watchers. We’re not that big of fans of those yet seeing the dancing peacock and Tucans was pretty amazing!
• Crocodiles, so many of them. They were just lying on the the lake banks, sleeping with their mouth open, which is a pretty scary sight.
• And so many more: lizards, mouses, other smaller sized mammals and fish.

The highlight of our 3 safaris was seeing a 15-20 large elephant troop walking towards a waterhole. Some jeeps stopped there and the baby elephant got nervous and trumpeting vividly. At that point the whole group went back to comfort him. The baby elephant started swishing his tail from side to side, meaning he was happy again. So adoooorable!!

ELEPHANT TRANSIT HOME

There’s no such thing as seeing too many elephants. Especially baby ones. It’s a transit home, but it’s also an orphanage as the babies were found wandering alone, as their mothers died. Over 100 elephants have been rehabilitated at the ETH and when they are old enough and prepared – released into the wild. Although you can’t get up close and personal with the elephants, seeing them at feeding time (from a viewing platform) is still a lot of fun. This is what an orphanage should look like and the elephants don’t get chained to amuse the tourists, so please don’t fall for Pinnawala “Orphanage” and read into the background, not to support animal cruelty.

WHERE TO STAY AND BOOK YOUR SAFARI?

Thought, we’ve never been much of campers, this wasn’t the most obvious decision, but we wouldn’t have done it any other way. Master Campers is more of a glamping as they took care of us as in the most luxury hotels! The sight is located in a very peaceful area overlooking a swamp and a smaller lake and you feel so connected with the nature. They organised our 3 safaris for 2 nights stay (could also have 4 safaris), visit to Elephant transit home, meals by the lake and basically every need we had, so we could just focus on this perfect experience of seeing these amazing animals in the wild.

 

Master Campers truly go off the beaten track where others didn’t go (like driving into a 1.20m deep river 🙂 ), thanks to the best and kindest driver ever! When booking a safari it is so important to have a guide. To you it might seem just an extra cost, but the truth is, you won’t be able to notice so many animals yourself. We went with Roy (always ask for Roy if you’re staying with Master Campers), as he noticed every tiny lizard, foxes, leopard footprints etc, and he’s in love with the Park as there was no question he didn’t know the answer to!

Read more about our 3 weeks Sri Lanka adventures here.