Safari

Sri Lanka is one of the finest wildlife-watching countries in southern Asia. The island may be small but the variety of habitats and wildlife here would to justice to a country many times its size, from leopard sightings in sun-dappled forests to great gatherings of elephants beside ancient reservoirs.

In the south-east, Yala National Park is arguably Sri Lanka’s premier wildlife reserve – over 320,000 acres of forests, scrubland, lagoons and grassy plains home to sloth bears, sambars, jackals, spotted deer, crocodiles, buffalo and elephants, not to mention one of the highest concentrations of leopards in the world.

Situated on the north-west coast and bordering the Indian Ocean, Wilpattu National Park is interspersed with a number of floodplain lakes. This vast expanse of land and forest boasts impressive varieties of wildlife, including deer, elephants, wild boar, sloth bears and leopards.

Inland, close to the towns of Habarana and Sigiriya, are Minneriya and Kaudulla national parks. The centrepiece of Minneriya is its large tank or reservoir, which attracts vast numbers of elephants as water dries up elsewhere during the hotter months of the year. Despite its relatively small size, the park boasts an unusually wide range of habitats, from dry tropical forests to wetlands and grasslands.