Which Sri Lankan national park to choose

Block 1 has roughly one leopard per square kilometre, which is the highest recorded density anywhere. Your odds of a sighting on two drives in the dry season are genuinely good. So the case for Yala is simple and it is real.

The case against is equally real. In February and March at the gate at 05:30 there will be a queue of a hundred jeeps, and when a leopard is called on the radio, most of them converge on it. It is not always a wilderness experience and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

• Block 1 usually closes for September and October each year for the drought. Blocks 5 and Kumana stay open. Confirm before booking a September trip.
• The afternoon drive is quieter than the morning one and the light is better.
• A full-day permit, rather than the standard half-day, lets your driver sit and wait rather than race. It is the difference between hunting a leopard and watching one.
• Stay at Tissamaharama for the choice of places, or at a camp inside the buffer for the early gate.

If you want to see elephants and you have one safari in your trip, go here. Around five hundred elephants live in open scrub and grassland around a reservoir, the sightlines are long, and there is no realistic scenario in which you leave without close, unhurried sightings of family groups with calves.

There are no leopards to speak of, which is precisely why the drives are calmer — nobody is racing anywhere. There are also water buffalo, jackal, crocodile and a great deal of birdlife. The Elephant Transit Home nearby releases orphaned calves back to the wild and has feeding times open to visitors, which is a genuinely ethical operation as distinct from most places in this country with the word elephant in the name.

Sri Lanka's largest park, in the north-west, built around a system of natural sand-rimmed lakes called villus. It has leopards, it has sloth bear — which Yala mostly does not — and on a normal morning you might see three other vehicles all day.

Sightings are less frequent than at Yala because the park is bigger and the cover is denser. That is the trade. What you get instead is an actual wilderness, and a leopard you find yourself rather than one you queue for. If your trip goes anywhere near Anuradhapura, it is an hour away, and most itineraries drive straight past it.

Between roughly July and October the reservoirs in the Cultural Triangle shrink back and grass grows on the exposed bed. Elephants come to it from across the dry zone — two, three, sometimes over four hundred animals in one open plain in a single afternoon. It is the largest gathering of Asian elephants anywhere and it is genuinely one of the great wildlife spectacles.

Which of the three parks has them depends entirely on where the water is that month, and it moves. Do not book a specific park weeks in advance. Book a jeep and let the driver decide on the day — they all talk to each other and they all know.

• Morning drives leave around 05:00–05:30 and run to about 09:30. Afternoon drives leave around 14:30 and run to sunset, when the parks close.
• A shared jeep means four to six strangers in an open vehicle. A private jeep is the same vehicle without them, and it is the upgrade that most changes the day.
• Park entry is priced in dollars for foreigners and is paid at the gate along with a tracker fee. A tracker rides with you; it is compulsory and it is a good thing.
• Wear dull colours, bring a hat and something for dust, and do not expect to be able to stand up on the seats — some drivers encourage it and it is how people get hurt.
• Binoculars change the day more than a long lens does. Almost nobody brings any.