Sri Lanka is one of the best places in Asia for seeing wildlife. It is also one of the best all-round wildlife destinations in the world thanks to the mix of big game, marine life and varied landscapes. It is a country rich with endemic wildlife packed into a compact area. A very good tourism infrastructure helps too.
The island’s isolation from mainland India, the heavy rainfall of the two diagonally blowing monsoons and the country’s wide range of altitudes, have given Sri Lanka a variation in climate and biodiversity only normally found across an entire continent. On top of that, the island has become known as the easiest place in the world to see the hitherto elusive blue whale, the largest animal to have lived on the planet.
For more than 2,000 years, swathes of land have been preserved as sanctuaries by Sri Lankan royalty – the Mihintale reserve was created here in the third century BC. Now there are more than a hundred areas of protected land in the country, and here is the pick of the bunch…
