Taxi from Colombo Airport to Tissamaharama, fixed price private transfer

The E03 joins the E01 Southern Expressway as far as the Beliatta interchange, after which the A2 runs east past Hambantota to Tissa. Two hundred and sixty-five kilometres and four and a half hours. The expressway does two thirds of it; the A2 beyond Hambantota is a wide, fast, strangely empty road built alongside the port and airport developments, and it is one of the quicker ordinary roads in the country. The result is a long transfer that is nonetheless very predictable, which is what you want when a safari booking depends on it.

From Lunugamvehera onwards the A2 runs along the edge of open country, and elephants on or beside the road at dawn and dusk are not an event here, they are routine. Drivers who know this stretch slow down at first and last light and do not overtake into blind bends, because a bull elephant standing in the carriageway at seven in the evening is a real possibility rather than a photograph. Peacocks, buffalo and stray dogs use the road as freely. None of this is dangerous at a sensible speed and all of it is dangerous at an unwise one. In Tissa itself, the accommodation is spread between the town, the tank and the road towards the park gate at Kirinda, which are three quite different locations, so the property name matters more than the town name.

Four and a half hours, mostly fast and flat, so pick for comfort and space rather than capability. The comfort sedan for up to four with a case each, the comfort van for five or six, and the same logic as anywhere else. The point worth making on this route is a different one: our vehicle does not go into Yala. Park regulations require a registered safari jeep with a tracker, booked separately, and it collects you from your hotel at around half past four in the morning. Nobody should arrive expecting the transfer car to do the safari, and anyone who offers you that is offering something they cannot deliver.

There is no train to Tissamaharama and no useful bus without at least one change and most of a day. This is a destination reached by road, which is why almost every visitor arrives by car. The genuine alternative is not a different mode of transport but a different plan: many people break the journey at Tangalle or Mirissa for a night rather than doing 265 kilometres on the day they land. If your safari is booked for the morning after a long-haul arrival, that is worth considering seriously.

Leave the airport early enough to arrive before dark, both for the elephants on the last stretch and because the roads around the tank are unlit. The best game viewing at Yala runs from February to July, when water is scarce and animals concentrate around the remaining pools; Block 1, the main and busiest section, usually closes from the start of September to mid-October, and a safari booked for those weeks is a safari nobody can honour. The north-east monsoon brings rain from November into January. Whatever the season, the practical rule is the same: land, sleep, then go into the park at first light, rather than trying to do both in one day.