Yala National Park Safari Day Tour from Ella

Apart from the trip, what I appriciated is the communication from the local provider. The driver and guide, Mr. Kosala was great.

At first, we were disappointed that the tour operator cancel our 5am booking the night before at 9pm (via email) because of Ceylon New Years. This is the main reason it was not a 5-star experience. Our tour guide Thisaru was absolutely amazing. He organized getting an item I left at my hotel back for me and was fantastic when navigating around a giant elephant on the road. We were able to see Water Buffalo, Deer, Elephants, different species of Birds, and some small Crocs. Nothing is guaranteed so we feel lucky to have fallen on such a good day.

The arrangement was very good, and the local travel agency kindly answered my questions through WhatsApp. Take a relatively high sightseeing jeep for the whole journey, but don't expect to watch animals at close range, because there are driving lanes in the national park, and they will not be too close to the places where animals appear.

maybe not a good choice for us since the trip from Ella already took more than 2 hours (i thought Yala has other entrances in the northern part which would just be a little more than an hour fro. Ella). The local operator that picked us up from the hotel has other safari provider (it seems like all safari jeeps are external providers, not Yala's) that we met at the meeting point, which added another 45 minutes one way. thats why when we were at the actual safari already, we only lasted for 75 minutes and decided to cut the trip short already as we still had another 3-3.5 hour drive back from the actuaal park, to the meweting point, then to our hotel. the safari jeeps were also getting too crowded (maybe because it was Christmas holiday when we went so there were a lot of guests. i paid 100usd (33,300 srilankan rupees) for the entrance. I'm not sure if it was just for myself, wife, and 5-year-old kid, or if it also included our chauffer from local operator, and the safari jeep driver. because i saw in the ticketing office signage that adult ticket is at 20usd (as also advertised in this tour), so guests need to bring extra money for this just in case. then also bring/buy own food as the trip is too long for just the light snacks included in this tour.

Thank you so much for being a wonderful guide! Since it was a private tour, you were kind enough to stop the car whenever I wanted to take pictures of animals. Also, thank you for showing me a leopard, even though the chances of seeing one are low! Thanks to you, I had a very enjoyable time!

Our driver picked us up from our hotel in Ella at 5am. He was very friendly and helpful. We arrived to meet our safari driver and got into Yala national Park at around 7:30. Our safari driver shared a lot of interesting information about the animals we saw. We were very lucky to see two leopards, a family of elephants bathing and lots of other interesting animals. We spent around 3.5 hours driving around Yala which was plenty of time to see lots of different things. We also paid an extra fee (60 usd) to be dropped to Galle instead of back to Ella. Overall the trip was great - just be aware you will need to pay for the entrance fee to Yala which was about 11,000 rupee. Would recommend.

The tour guide was very good and very serious about finding animals. The time spent in the park was very sufficient and it was a great experience. The waterfall we stopped at on the way back was also very beautiful!

The route to and from Ella is not very smooth. It is recommended that you drive a Matara round trip. As for the itinerary itself, there is nothing to fault. It all depends on your luck as to which animals you see. Unfortunately, you did not see a cheetah, but there are still many animals worth seeing.

was disappointed as I couldn’t see anything in the safari. I only say peacocks, deer and elephants. no leopard, no sunbear..

we couldn’t find the leopard, but the guide tried us to find them as long as they can. the driver was nice too! thanks