Taxi in Minneriya, private transfers at a fixed price

We collect from hotels in Habarana, Sigiriya, Giritale, Minneriya town and Polonnaruwa, and from the guesthouses down the lanes off the A11, where the address on your booking is a landmark rather than a number. At the park we stop in the car park beside the Ambagaswewa ticket office and the car stays there: you leave in a jeep, your bags do not change vehicle. Afternoon safaris set off around two, which is also when you want to be at the counter, because ticket sales close in the late afternoon well before the park does. Morning safaris start at six, and a six o’clock jeep means the car is outside in the dark — say so at reception the night before, since the hotel gates around Habarana are shut at that hour. Pickups for Kaudulla or Hurulu work the same way; only the drive changes.

There is no centre here you can reach on foot. The ticket office at Ambagaswewa sits on the A11 nine kilometres east of Habarana junction, the town of Minneriya is another fifteen towards Giritale, and the hotels are strung between the two, most of them down a side track. Your own car stops at the counter: past it only jeeps registered with the Department of Wildlife Conservation may drive, so the split that works is a private vehicle for the road and a hired jeep for the two or three hours inside. Buses do run the A11 between Habarana and Polonnaruwa all day, but none of them puts you at the gate for a two o’clock start, and none of them brings you back from a drive that ends at dusk. Polonnaruwa is 45 kilometres east of Habarana, Dambulla 22 west, Trincomalee about 90 north.

June to September is the Gathering, August and early September its peak. From October the inter-monsoon rains and then the north-east monsoon fill the tank, the grassland goes under, and the same park becomes a green, quiet, largely elephant-free drive. Afternoons beat mornings here, because the herds only leave the treeline once the heat drops; the park works a six-to-six day and jeeps must be out before it closes. Two honest warnings. The first is jeep traffic: in peak season dozens of vehicles converge on a single herd and the drivers phone each other from park to park. The second is the water. Releases from the Moragahakanda scheme upstream have flooded the grassland out of season repeatedly since 2018, and when that happens the elephants leave for Kaudulla within a week or two — which is why you ask on the day instead of committing to one park a month ahead. Park entry and the jeep are both settled at Ambagaswewa and are not part of the transfer.

The Gathering is the reason to come, with one caveat: it moves, and water moves it. When the Minneriya tank is low the herds are out on its grass; when rain or an irrigation release refills it, the grass goes under and they walk north to Kaudulla, a park in its own right since 2002 and part of the same protected corridor; when Kaudulla fills in turn they shift to Hurulu, an eco park cut out of the forest reserve that UNESCO listed as a biosphere reserve in 1977, three kilometres from Habarana on the Trincomalee road. Kaudulla’s gate is 22 kilometres north of Habarana, so all three sit within half an hour of the same base. Around the tank there are painted storks, spot-billed pelicans and cormorants drying their wings in the drowned trees, sambar, buffalo and mugger crocodile, with toque macaques and purple-faced langurs in the woodland. Leopard and sloth bear are on the park list and are almost never seen.