If you want to see elephants – properly, up close, in large numbers, in daylight, with near certainty – Udawalawe is the park to visit. Around 500 to 700 elephants call this place home year-round, and the open grassland surrounding the reservoir means you can watch them at length without the jungle obscuring the view. There’s no crowded jeep queue equivalent of Yala here – just wide, flat, open elephant country that makes for extraordinary photography and deeply satisfying safari hours. The adjacent Elephant Transit Home, where orphaned calves are raised before release, is an added and genuinely moving bonus.