Let me be honest with you. Yesterday's safari did not go the way we planned.
We picked up two guests from Ella, headed toward Tangalle, with an Udawalawe safari along the way. It started well. A stop at Rawana Falls on the way. Then a pause at a quiet lake before the park, not a well-known tourist spot, but one of our favourite places to observe wildlife calmly. Monkeys, egrets, cormorants, a couple of monitor lizards that gave one of the guests a genuine shock.
We stopped for a Sri Lankan breakfast, fresh and included, something we always offer as a Nomad Trails extra.
Inside the park
We entered Udawalawe around 9:30am, avoiding the noisy early-morning rush. No convoys of jeeps at the gate. No racing to catch sightings. Just us, the open forest, and time.
We went deep into the park, away from the crowded circuits. The routes most jeeps do not bother to take. These tracks are quieter, less touched, and they give guests a real sense of being immersed in the wild rather than following a parade.
We passed serene lakes. Forest tracks where nothing moved except birds. An Indian Roller in full flight, its wings a flash of electric blue. A White-bellied Sea Eagle overhead. A Yellow-wattled Lapwing guarding her eggs in the middle of the road, defiant and utterly unbothered by the jeep. Monkeys everywhere. Herds of deer. Silence.
No elephants.
Not one.
I have been running safaris in Udawalawe for years. The least I have ever seen on a trip I arranged is around ten elephants. This had never happened to me before.
Why it was happening
I knew what was going on. The recent heavy rains had pushed the elephants deep into the forest interior, away from the main reservoir and the open grasslands where they are normally reliable. When there is water everywhere, they do not need to come to the big reservoir. They are already spread across the park, in the areas where jeeps are not permitted to go.
My guests were genuinely understanding about it. "It's nature," they said. "You can't force animals to appear."
They were right. But I still felt it. I had been watching the clock and the routes and the water levels and hoping each time we rounded another track that something would be there.
After four and a half hours, our planned time was up.
The decision
I looked at my driver. No words needed. We both felt the same thing.
This was not about the schedule anymore. It was not about profit. Something else had taken over. We were not ready to give up.
So I said to him quietly: one more route. One last try. Whatever it costs us.
Forget the clock.
What happened next
Barely fifteen minutes into the extra time, there he was. A lone bull elephant at Jithwila, a small quiet lake that most jeeps never reach. Quietly grazing beside the water, completely calm and unbothered. As if he had been waiting there, patient and still, for exactly this moment.
We stopped, switched off the engine, and stayed with him for a long time.
Then we kept driving, because we could feel it: more nearby.
A few minutes later, the biggest tuskless male I have seen in a long time. His temporal glands leaking slightly behind his eyes, a damp streak on his face. Signs of musth. His body tense and deliberate, snapping branches as he moved, carrying that particular weight that large bulls carry when their hormones are high. Powerful in a way that stays with you even after you have driven away.
We kept the engine off and stayed very still.
Then a mother with her older calf and the tiniest elephant I have ever seen. A few weeks old at most. Wobbly on its feet, staying close to its mother, crossing the track in front of us like it had somewhere important to be.
Nobody spoke.
A group of females next, two playful young ones darting between the adults, and one clearly pregnant, swaying gently in the shade.
And at the very end, near the exit, alone in a muddy pool: a baby tusker, splashing and rolling and completely absorbed in the business of being a happy, muddy elephant in the afternoon sun.
In just over an hour, we went from zero elephants to more than ten. Bulls, babies, mothers, a tusker, a pregnant female, a brand-new calf.
What I felt
I can not properly explain the relief. The quiet joy.
The reminder of why I started doing this in the first place.
There is something I have come to believe after years of doing this work. When you approach the wild honestly, when you genuinely care about the people you are with and the animals you are watching, something seems to respond. Maybe it is just patience paying off. Maybe it is the extra hour. Maybe it is something harder to explain.
When you do something with a full heart and honest intentions, somehow it tends to find its way.
After the safari was over, I said goodbye to my driver, grateful for his patience and his willingness to stay when we both knew we could have left. The guests said it was one of the best days they had in Sri Lanka.
On the way out we stopped at the edge of the reservoir, a quiet spot with buffalo cooling in the mud and painted storks standing in the shallows. Then, because no Udawalawe day is complete without it, fresh green mango by the road, sliced and spiced with chilli and salt.
They had never tried it before. Their faces when they did made the whole day worth it twice over.
