Kaudulla National Park - Ellie and the Elephants - A Sri Lankan Love Story!
Coming to Sri Lanka there was one animal we couldn’t miss. Ellie, you see, has a slight fixation. Charitably you could say that she has a thing about elephants. Less charitably, you could say she is mildly obsessive about elephants, she loves them, their trunks, their big feet and their flappy ears, seriously, she even has an elephant themed travel pillow.
We had seen elephants on a rehabilitation program in Thailand, and, unfortunately, had also seen them chained and being led down the street in Kandy, but we wanted to see wild elephants. Unrestricted and in their natural environment. Thankfully we were staying in Habarana a stones throw from the amazing Kaudulla National Park.
What Ellie was hoping to see!
Elephant Safari’s in Sri Lanka
An elephant safari hadn’t really crossed our minds. Safari’s, generally speaking, are not to the budget of the long term backpacker. However, finding ourselves in Habarana which is surrounded by three huge national parks, containing many, many wild animals (including Ellie’s favourite grey friends), we thought we’d splash the cash.
Not to be a spoiler for the rest of the article, but this turned out to be a fantastic decision.
We arranged the afternoons safari through our lovely accommodation and were promptly picked up in a large open roofed 4x4 jeep. Clambering in, we headed out to Kaudulla National Park.
If you are looking to reserve a safari in advance make sure you check out your options on Get Your Guide here:
Our guide was brilliant from the get go, Samith Maduranga. Upon arrival at the park, our guide hopped out to sort out the entrance fee and took some photos of us posing in the back of the jeep.
It is worth mentioning that you should check that your total tour price includes the entrance to the park as we did see an unlucky couple (with a less lovely guide) have this sprung on them as a surprise cost, they were very unhappy as it is not a small cost.
If you were looking at doing a safari independently the entrance fee for Kaudulla National park is around 25 dollars per adult.
Photos taken, we were ready to spot some animals.
Our experience on safari at Kaudulla National Park.
Samith fired up the engine and started the drive down the long straight dirt road into the National Park itself. Within minutes of entering the park, he had spotted something both of us had missed.
Two pointy ears and a tail were sticking out of a bush. John, thinking he was David Attenborough, was initially unimpressed. “It’s a dog isn’t it”? ‘It’ as it turned out was not a dog, but a jackal. Having never encountered one before, and as we had only just rolled into the park, we took this as a good sign of things to come.
Continuing on the park's main road, our guide kept stopping to point out different birds, monkeys, lizards and all manner of wildlife.
It was only the beginning of our safari and we were already being spoilt by Kaudulla. Standing up in our jeep we were loving it. Although we did occasionally have to perform Matrix-like dodges to avoid low hanging branches.
A Langur monkey being a poser!
As the dirt track opened up into grassland, we emerged from the dense forest. It was like we had been transported to the African savannah (please note neither of us have actually been to the African savannah so we are basing this entirely upon BBC wildlife shows). Stretched out in front of us was the enormous Kaudulla Wewa Lake.
We pulled up to the lake as our guide had spotted something else. John again demonstrated his amazing eye for wildlife by remarking “isn’t that a telegraph pole”? It was not a telegraph pole, but an old tree trunk.
John had also apparently missed the enormous sea eagle that was perched on top of it. The eagle posed for many photographs and we were able to see (with the help of a zoom lens) his beautiful blue plumage.
Continuing round the lake, we were greeted by flocks of egrets, storks and other wading birds and even a colourful peacock. This was all fantastic but decidedly not elephanty. As we were circling the lake we started to get worried. The flat grassland stretched away in all directions around us, but unfortunately the only mammal we could see was a solitary buffalo. The view was distinctly lacking in the giant grey creatures we had pinned our hopes on seeing.
We know that the elephants are wild, they roam in and out of the three national parks in the surrounding area, and you’re never totally guaranteed to see them. However, we really had set our hope on seeing at least one elephant that day and from the perspective we had at that moment, it looked like we may be leaving disappointed.
You would think on a flat landscape surrounding a flat lake with no hills in sight and very few trees there would be nowhere to hide, but somehow the Kaudulla National Park managed to hide at least 200 elephants right up until we rounded a corner of the lake. Seemingly out of nowhere, we were greeted with an incredible sight.
You’d think they’d be quite hard to hide!
We turned a bend around a small wooded area and suddenly there they were. Scores of elephants (too many to count) were grazing, bathing, playing and generally elephanting (spell check states this is not a world, we disagree) around.
We pulled up our jeep and turned our engine off around twenty metres away from a family unit and just sat and stared in awe. Okay, we might have taken a few hundred photos as well! The family group had a young calf with them, who as far as we could see, was in the middle of throwing a world class temper tantrum. There was rolling on the floor, snorting of mud at his elders and an attempt at charging which ended up with him tripping over his own feet. All the while the mother and other more senior elephants looked on in a bored apathy which just screamed “here he goes again”.
Stroppy little baby!
Nothing had prepared us for the sheer amount of elephants we were seeing, every direction from our open roofed jeep had a herd, mother or family unit relaxing in it. Every time we turned a corner, there was another group. Our guide explained that we were seeing the females and babies of the herd, as the bulls were booted out of the family unit as soon as they were old enough. We saw a few solitary bulls looking quite lonely as they looked on at the playing families, occasionally trumpeting in an attempt to get their attention (from what we saw it looked like they had very little success).
We could have spent all day just watching these giant creatures. They all seemed to have so much personality and we know that we have been personifying them a little in this, but honestly watching them for ten minutes was like watching a mini sitcom, only its stars were well over two metres tall and weighed a few tonnes.
A couple of hours and a few thousand photos later, our jeep turned around and drove us out of the park and back to our hotel.
We’ve mentioned it earlier but our guide Samith was fantastic. Informative and knowledgeable without ever coming across like he was giving us a lecture. He waited patiently for us to get our photos and frequently rearranged the jeep so we could get a better look. He was also deeply respectful of the wild animals never invading their space or pushing too close just so we could get a photo. We were worried when we booked a “Safari” as we had heard negative things about overcrowding of the animals in another park, with Samith and Kaudulla our worries were completely unfounded.
We had always hoped to see an elephant in the wild in Sri Lanka, but what we saw on that day in Kaudulla National Park, will stay with us forever. One of the best things about travel is that you get to collect experiences and memories, and these stay with you forever. The memory of that day will be making us happy throughout the rest of our lives.
If you want to see more of our day with the elephants, check out our YouTube video below:
How much was our elephant safari at Kaudulla
As we mentioned we arranged this tour through our hotel and paid 24000 LKR (£60.89 or $78.19) for the two of us, including transport to and from the park, our guide, jeep and entrance fee. It was a pricey day, and you may be able to get it cheaper especially if there’s more than two of you, but frankly the experience was priceless.
There are many ways to book a tour in advance check out:
Viatour - (Private Tour)
Animal welfare at Kaudulla National Park
We’ve heard mixed things about some of the national parks in Sri Lanka. We’ve seen photos of solitary leopards being surrounded by twenty plus jeeps, all snapping photos. Maybe it was the time we went, but this was not the case in Kaudulla. There were other jeeps around, but there were far more elephants than people and all the vehicles kept a good distance away from the animals. We’re not wildlife experts but it seemed that the elephants of Kaudulla didn’t react to our presence.
The elephants we saw are part of roving herds that pass through Kaudulla and the neighbouring parks, they are not fenced in and are free to roam where they please. As you may expect from the above, you are never completely guaranteed to see an elephant, they are wild after all!
As with all organised interactions with animals, please do your research. Kaudulla however, at the time we visited, was simply amazing.
How to get to Kaudulla / Staying Near Kaudulla National Park
Kaudulla National park is a half hour drive north east of Habarana town. Habarana has lots of accomodation options and is a great base for lots of different central Sri Lankan attractions. Have a look at the map below for your accomodation choices and check out our full article on Habarana here.
Most of the tours / safari’s will pick you up from your accommodation and those few that do not will start from their offices in Habarana town.
In addition to the local buses and trains to Habarana you can organise a direct taxi transfer from Colombo airport to Habarana / Kaudulla here.
You can, if you are very short on time, arrange a tour from Colombo that takes in Kaudulla and other centeral Sri Lankan high lights. If you are running up against the end of your time on the Island check your options for cramming as much in as possible!
Other national parks near Habarana
Habarana is close to three national parks:
Kaudulla - You’ve just been reading about it!
Minneriya - A huge wilderness park bordering a massive ancient reservoir featuring nearly 90 square kilometres of wildlife sanctuary. You can see elephants, and all manner of other creatures here. We have not been and won’t pretend to be experts, but if you are interested check out this tour. Minneriya is only an 11 minute drive to the east of Habarana town.
Kalawewa - Straddling two large 5th century reservoirs Kalawewa National park boast large herds of tusked (rarer in Sri Lanka) elephants. It sits a little further away 45 minutes to the west of Habarana and is only accessible during the dry season (December to March). Again we did not actually visit this and aren’t the kind of bloggers who will pretend to, but if you are interested check out a tour here or here.
Choosing which national park to visit?
Sri Lanka has many beautiful national parks with the enormous Yala and Udawalawe in the south through to the central ones in this article to Wilpattu in the north. When choosing where to visit; we would always check for seasonality (Yala National Park is closed for six weeks between September and mid-October) and recent reviews. As we mentioned, at one point one of the parks was being criticised for overcrowding its animals so do your research.
When we came to choose where we wanted to go in the central region for a safari we deferred to the best of resources, local knowledge. Our guesthouse had a friend, who had a friend, who’s second cousin twice removed owned a rabbit…..you get the idea. Our guesthouse had heard through the grapevine that the large herds had moved out of Minneriya and were grazing in Kaudulla. We checked up on Kaudualla, Ellie did her elephant ethics research and it came up positive so it was to Kaudulla we went.
Thanks for reading,
John & Ellie x
#adventuresofjellie
Can you tell she was having a good day?!
