Private Tour : YALA National Park with Experienced Driver and Guide

Malith is the Best Agent for Yala Safari. We saw so many animals during the Safari. We felt very comfortable and thoroughly enjoyed the Safari. We were the first ones to enter the park and also the first jeep to see leopard. Amazing!! Must visit spot. Definitely revisiting with same agency in the future.

I am adding an email sent to the owner of this company. Despite the initial mail and a reminder, I did not receive a response so I am posting this account of our experience here to allow others to make an informed decision. _______________________________________________________________________________ Now that I am back in London, I wanted to give you some feedback on our experience. We were picked up on time and were at the ticket office by 510am only to find out that the naturalist I had requested would not be there until 6. So we had no guide. Did we not pay for this? We then arrived at the gate at 515 and were then told the gate didn’t open until 545. When I asked why we had arrived 30 min earlier, your driver said it was to be first in. When the gate opened, your driver aggressively battled to be first, almost shoving the jeep next to us off the road. We then travelled in a dusty caravan at at least 50kmh into the park. We passed a stone feature at the side of the road and when our driver saw that others had stopped, he flew in reverse at full speed for about 200m to muscle his way into a tangle of a dozen jeeps in order to get a glimpse of a leopard. The words of may partner were ’this makes me embarrassed to be a human’. I told the driver this was not good and to get us away away from the pack of jeeps at all cost. We would rather see no wildlife than feel we are driving through Delhi rush hour. As the experience currently stands, I would not take any of my clients on the safari. We do tours regularly at Chitwan National Park in Nepal and the behaviour of the drivers is nothing like this. And I can tell you that the majority of tourists that visit Yala with you and your competitors will feel exactly as we did. I would like to suggest you liaise with the other operators and share the story because you are headed down the wrong path. If you are able to provide a tour the features the serenity of nature rather than an aggressive tangle of diesel-spewing jeeps, we would be willing to give it another try. If not, we will find other activities for our guests.

A 7 hour tour pre booked. We were very lucky to see the animals. Leopards , elephants , sloth bear, monkey , deers, water buffalo , wart hogs and many many birds. Our driver was amazing - sorry for the name error but “nalaka” or similar was very knowledgeable and warned of us some high speed driving to get to the animal. There are previous reviews of a mad rush of vehicles but we went in low season so yes there was times were 10+ jeeps in the same place but that is we’re the animals were so what we expected. Not everyone sees all these things we did so we were very pleased. Please be aware that booking through this company only confirms the guide and not entrance to the park, this could be a little difficult if you don’t take any money - approx 23500 rupees. A fantastic experience. Thank you yala wild. James and Kate.