Obviously, seeing all the ancient sites is the main reason to go to Polonnaruwa. If you can spare another day though, there’s another popular activity for travelers in the area— a day trip to the Minneriya National Park, which is famous for the number of Asian Elephants roaming inside. Depending on the time of the year, there can be as much as 700 elephants here. We weren’t aware of this before we arrived. It turns out that the owner of the guest house where we were staying at also owns a jeep so he runs his own day tours to the National Park. He charges 5000 Rupees per person. Once again I balked at the price. That’s about 33 US dollars. I wasn’t too keen on spending that much money for a Safari, especially since I’ve already been on safaris in Africa. But the two guys I was traveling with wanted to go. And rather than stay behind at the guest house doing nothing, I decided to go with them. This was totally unplanned and it was something I didn’t really feel like doing, but what the heck. It could be fun. We did check the rates offered online. An entrance to the park costs 15 USD per person. But of course you can’t just walk inside else you’d get trampled by the elephants. You have to rent a jeep. Most jeep tours costs around 60 USD per person, so I thought we got a really great deal. The owner didn’t seem like the scammy type, but it’s hard to tell these days especially if you’re not a local.

We haven’t had lunch yet so we asked him if we could stop by a cheap restaurant first for lunch. Emphasis on the word CHEAP. He brought us to this place where one dish costs about 500-700 Rupees. That’s only about 4 US dollars, but we were about to spend a lot of money for the trip to the national park so we went back outside and told him we found the place expensive lol. He had this surprised look on his face but I think he got the message because he brought us to a really cheap place. The next place was an all you can eat buffet for only 300 Rupees. They only served veggies which could explain why it was so cheap, but the dishes were pretty good and really filling.

We made a couple of stops along the way and the guest house owner/ driver/ tour guide showed us a couple of monkey and birds. I actually thought we were already inside the national park. It wasn’t until we saw a gate that I realized we weren’t there yet. It took us about an hour to get there. He had to pay the entrance fee so we had a couple of minutes to spare. I used the time to experience a toilet with a view lol.

We didn’t have to wait long. Our guide was able to pay for our entrance after about 15 minutes. There were lots of other jeeps waiting at the parking lot, i was surprised how popular the national park was since we’ve never heard of it from other travelers. Once the jeep ahead of us left, our guide waited for about 2 minutes before driving. This was a good decision because it created comfortable gaps between jeeps. Along the dirt road we made stops whenever our guide saw birds, monkey and other animals. The dirt road ends in an open field. The view was amazing. We saw a couple of peacocks and some more birds.

After a couple more minutes, we saw a huge herd of elephants in the distance. It was such an amazing sight. I’ve never seen so many elephants gathered in one place before.

Once we got close though, something didn’t feel quite right. Since the elephants were the top attractions in the park, all of the jeeps who were ahead of us were stopping near the elephants. Some drivers even overtook others or cut them off as they were jockeying for position. I was wondering how the elephants were feeling. Yeah, it wasn’t as zoo, and yeah the elephants weren’t chained and they were able to roam free, but it still didn’t feel quite right. The elephants didn’t seem to be bothered though, so maybe I was overthinking it. Though I did hear about some incidents when male elephants rammed against the jeeps, or when mother elephants got angry when jeeps got too close to their calves— I’d think the animals were not completely okay with the set up. I guess to improve things, they should limit the number of guests coming in. And there should also be a limit on how long each jeep can stay near the herd to prevent overcrowding.

Aside from those gripes, I’d say it’s worth spending 5000 Rupees for a day trip. We saw some amazing sights and overall we did have fun. If you spend more than a day in Polonnaruwa, a trip to this park is one activity to consider. There may be too many tourists at any given time, but they treat the animals here way better than other so called “sanctuaries” in the country.