Udawalawe National Park Safari with Elephant Transit Home Visit
Description
Take a tour of Udawalawe National Park with Elephant transit home visit, one of Sri Lanka's largest animal sanctuaries. Because this is a private tour, you’ll have plenty of time to hear commentary about the wildlife you’ll see and ask questions. Keep an eye out for elephants, water buffalo, fox, leopards, and other animals from the comfort of a rugged 4x4 vehicle. Morning or Afternoon options are available to suit your schedule.
Tour Options
Itinerary
Framed by soaring highlands on its northern boundary, the Uda Walawe National Park is one of the world's best places to see wild elephants. Largely comprised of grasslands and bush forest, it's also one of the best national parks in Sri Lanka for game spotting.
Supported by the Born Free Foundation, this complex is a halfway house for orphaned elephants. After rehabilitation, the elephants are released back into the wild, many into the Uda Walawe National Park. 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.
Highlights
What's included
Traveller Ratings
Important Information
- Suitable for all physical fitness levels
Reviews(26)
Excellent safari with Prasad. He was excellent at spotting elephants, peacocks, crocodiles and even lizards in the national park. We also stopped by the elephant sanctuary to see feeding time which was wonderful!
Udawalawe itself was magic. Touring with this company was not. They didn’t confirm my booking until I escalated through Viator because they never responded to my WhatsApp message asking if the tour was confirmed. They also gave me the wrong pickup time (I was told 6:30am, but the driver arrived at 6:00am and was confused why I wasn’t ready), so I ended up rushing out the door. They failed to mention that although the park accepts card, your driver pays the entrance fee in cash for the whole vehicle — meaning you must bring the park fee in cash. They also never informed my driver that my tour included a visit to the Udawalawe Transit Home, so he was completely surprised when I asked about seeing the orphaned elephants. The guide they hired inside the park was a dud: he shared almost no information, had to be prompted, and what he did offer was either obvious or incorrect. I ended up spotting more wildlife than he did. The upsides? My driver (his name started with an M) was genuinely lovely and really helpful, especially when I was sorting out payment. And we did see plenty of elephants throughout the morning, though my sense is that’s simply the nature of Udawalawe rather than anything creditable to the company.
After booking, no one contacted me from the tour. My booking was 2.30pm, so I called TripAdvisor support to get the actual operator's number. Then I called them and they were on the way, So we started the tour half hour late. The guide picked me up and then transferred to another local safari jeep, I even had to pay for his entrance ticket which was a very small amount. So this company doesn't do the tour they just get a commission and send you to someone else. The English speaking guide knew what he was doing but never really told anything just drove us around, just being a driver. So bottom line it's pointless to book this in advance just take the tour from your hotel and they give you a discount as well.
Great to see the small elephants, amazing conservation work. Big crowd but could easily see, lovely experience for whole family
We visited the elephant transit home before taking the Safari. It was feeding time and the baby elephants were so happy to receive their milk. They were delightful to watch and seeing the babies interact with each other was cute and fascinating. Really enjoyed the visit. Our safari was also a great experience and we managed to see a one month old baby elephant with their family as well as many other elephants. The jeep driver was respectful of the animals. We also saw peacocks, crocs, spotted deers, water buffalo and a variety of birds.
Amazing experience! So so many baby elephants of all sizes, they definitely knew when feeding time was and some were very persistent they had seconds. Amazing experience and all will go on to be wild elephants which was very Important to us. Have to visit!
Many impressions, and got a lot of good pictures. Nice guide who spoke English ok. Guide knew lot about birds and elephants. It was a good experience, and worth the money😊
The jeep driver was half an hour late. We had to call the given number 6 times. We stood at the homemade meeting point at 6.00am. We found it inappropriate for the elephants that 50 jeeps with running engines stood at 3 elephants. we therefore stopped the safari.
Pathum was a brilliant guide. We were picked up on time . He took us to all the busy spots then took us further into the park . We saw 15 different elephants 3 crocodiles monkeys and loads of birds .
This is scam! We paid for 4 hours safari. They gave us 2 hours and asked to get out of the car. When we asked driver to continue safari he literally laughed at our faces and told us safari started from the moment when he picked us up from the House. Altough IT remained still 1 hour safari. He refused to continue his service. FRAUDELNT people!!!! SCAM!!!!!
