One of the big things to do in Sri Lanka is go to on a safari. The most popular national park, Yala, features leopards, which sounded very cool but they are notoriously hard to spot. After a bit of reading about which parks have what and when is best to go we opted for Udawalawa National Park, which is known for elephants and less popular than Yala (and therefore shouldn’t have the crowds of jeeps).

While the safari itself was great and we saw loads of birds and animals, the whole way it seems to work is strange at best. In the nearby town it’s expected you book your safari through your accommodation. If you don’t, we’d heard that they aren’t happy and suddenly your room costs a lot more. Looking on booking.com we could see some very cheap places (like $10 USD/night for a family) that clearly were doing this ploy – though of course, the listing didn’t mention any requirement to also book a safari with them. To avoid this we booked through our accommodation, which got excellent reviews (as I mentioned earlier, all 5 star review probably means there’s something going on).

On the morning we were to arrive, the hotel contacted us and let us know the address on booking.com was incorrect and gave us a different address to go to. It was a bit further out of town and had a couple of one star Google reviews about it being a scam. It was a definite red flag, but we hadn’t yet paid them and there was other accommodation to choose from, so we figured we’d see what happens.

We hired a driver to take us from Mirissa to Udawalawa and asked him to stay around until we were comfortable. When we pulled into the laneway, it was strangely unsigned. Even the reception area had no hotel name displayed. However, the staff were expecting us, knew about the safari we’d arranged and we had a room and a shared pool that looked like the pictures – so we were happy. The next morning M gets a notification that our booking had changed to be a year later. That’s strange, because with booking.com you can’t review a place until after your stay. When we ask the staff, they know nothing and say that they will need to ask the boss but we never hear anything.

The safari experience was also a bit strange. We got picked up from the hotel by a driver with a jeep with raised seats, the back row of which is not well secured (not unusual in Sri Lanka to be fair) and drive to the park. Just inside the park a volunteer guide jumps into the jeep, offering his services but it’s clear there’s a tip – some might be so bold as to call it a fee seeing as there’s no real way to opt out. I am still not sure if this is normal or not, but the guide at least has quite good English, unlike our driver, so we’re definitely going to get more information out of him.

With the guide, off we set to see elephants, many of which are from the elephant orphanage (Elephant Transit Home) next door. Therefore, they are relatively tame and very tolerant of the jeeps and noise so they just hang about wherever they want, which can be quite close to the road.

We also saw loads of birds, including peacocks which are very common in Sri Lanka, eagles and pretty Little Green Bee-eaters.

At the lake area where we stopped with many other jeeps, we could see crocodiles yawning.

Thanks to our guide, we also spotted some leopard prints in the mud (but no leopard alas):

I think that the guide was worthwhile – he directed our driver and so we didn’t get any of the not-so-great driver behaviour that we’d read about. For example, we’d heard that they would all race to a certain spot to see an animal so you’d all end up crowded round a group of elephants. And given that the park’s roads are dirt with potholes, trying to race anywhere would not be comfortable at all.

Our accommodation was ok, the pool was nice (complete with frogs!) but the overall vibe with all the strangeness was a bit off putting. At least the tuk tuk mafia didn’t operate here so we could easily use Grab / Pick Me apps to get a ride without the need to bargain, unlike Mirissa.