Yala National Park

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I think my expectations of Yala were too high so I ended up extremely disappointed by the whole experience. They day of the safari I got picked up at 4:20 am and drove to the ticket office of Yala National Park. My driver drove like a maniac! He was going super fast, it was cold and I felt very much unsafe on the back of a jeep without a seat belt so I held on to the bars as hard as I could.

At around 5am we got to the ticket office and the driver went to queue to wait for the office to open at 5:30am. Once he got the ticket he drove like a maniac once again to get us to the gate of the park. When we left the office it was already light and as we drove we saw that there were at least 60 other jeeps parked all through the streets. We arrived at the gate and there was a huge line of jeeps waiting but our driver decided he didn’t want to be in the back of the line so he went to the side and then stuck his jeep in between two that were closer to the entrance. The two french girls and myself were embarrassed… why didn’t he just wait? What was the hurry?

Long story short… in the 6 hours we spent in the jeep inside the park we saw one leopard (for about 10-15 seconds)and 6 elephants together (for about 5 minutes)... and some other meh! animals

I do understand that that is how safaris work but it felt like such a waste of time, maybe because I was expecting elephants to be all around and free and at the water holes haha I thought it would be more like Africa!

The worst part was not the lack of exotic animals, it was how the jeep drivers actually drove like maniacs inside the park! They drove super fast through the dirt roads to the point that my black pants turned reddish brown from the dirt.

When animals were found there were at least 60 jeeps going CRAZY on all directions to see the animal. In Africa they have strict rules about being quiet, not standing up, and overall respecting the animals; not here, people were up from their seats, pointing, talking, little kids crying… it was madness! It felt as if they didn’t respect the animal’s surroundings! So sad!

The more time I spent in the park the more I noticed that jeeps with Sri Lankan people were over crowded while jeeps with tourists had sometimes only 2 people in them while the car could fit at least 8. I can't help but wonder why they haven't set rules around that? Why companies don't have the initiative on working together to fill up the jeeps with peopleto contaminate less the environment for the species but then I stop and remember that for this country it's all about business! They all want to get their jeeps out there, they all want to make money, they all want a profit, none of them seem to actually care about the animals... once again, so so sad!

About Post Author

Andrea

Hi! It's me... Andrea! In 2016 I decided to drop everything and take a year to enrich my life and travel around the world. It turns out the world is just too big for 12 months! Still on the road and sharing my experience as a solo female traveler around the globe!