Sri Lanka + Tigers Photography Tour

After landing in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, you'll be driven about 30 minutes north to our 5-star, sustainable, beachside hotel 'Jetwing Blue' in Negombo, the country’s most famous fishing town. Relax in the pool, wander the beach or photograph the palm squirrels until we all meet in the evening for a welcome slideshow. After this, we’ll photograph one of the traditional sailing fishing boats on the beach, its backlit sails unfurled for us (wind permitting) glowing as the sun sets over the ocean. A good chance to check your cameras are working! After dinner it’s time to get a good night’s rest.

After breakfast we’ll depart on our adventure. For our entire stay in Sri Lanka, we’ll have two luxurious, air-conditioned Mercedes Benz vehicles with Wi-Fi, charge points etc, driven by the two best driver guides in the country, who speak excellent English and will travel with us each day.

After breakfast and checkout, our first drive is a quick one, to wander through the nearby fish market of Negombo past shimmering displays of various marine species. Always fascinating & colourful. We’ll then drive onwards for about 2 hours, to our first safari drive in a national park, looking for Asian elephants! The elephants are free to roam wherever they like, as the parks often only have short sections of fence where the park directly borders villages or main roads. We’ll use the latest intel to pick which of the national parks near here (Minneriya, Kaudulla or Hurulu) have the most elephants at the moment, and that’s where we’ll go! The way safari drives work in Sri Lanka is that once at the National Park, we swap from our Mercedes vans into a safari jeeps (3 of them for this park), driven by a local expert guide from that park.

All the parks in this region have monkeys, herds of deer, ample birdlife and many other animals, but it’s their herds of wild Asian elephants that make them famous, sometimes gathering in huge herds making this region a magnet for wildlife enthusiasts across the globe. We have to stay on the roads, but with some careful timing, we can position ourselves so these giants silently pass beside us, perhaps even so close that you could reach down with your camera and try for some epic low-down shots of these gentle elephants.

Late afternoon we’ll drive onwards about an hour to check into the astonishing 5-star, eco-chic 'Heritance Kandalama' designed by the world renowned Architect Jeffrey Bhawa. Built in the middle of lush greenery and carved into the rock face fronting a lake, the vegetation flows up the side of the building, causing the whole hotel to blend into the side of the hill, offering beautiful views out over the lake to the distant Sigiriya Rock Fortress in the jungle. Various monkey species play in the trees (keep your verandah doors closed), there’s an infinity pool, amazing outdoor bar, and so much more to love about this place, including dinner.

If you’re up early, I’d recommend a brief morning nature walk before breakfast around the property for birds and monkeys. After breakfast, we have the morning off to explore while we do a few private one-on-one sessions, and after lunch we have a special treat planned! A chop-chop-chopping sound will herald the arrival of our helicopter, which will land at the hotel’s helipad, remove it’s doors and welcome us onboard two guests at a time for an unforgettable 20min doors-off photography flight around the nearby World Heritage fortress rock of ‘Sigiriya’. Visible for miles, this enormous, cliff-sided granite column rises abruptly 180m into the sky above the surrounding jungle, and was selected by King Kashyapa (AD 477–495) for his new capital. He built an almighty palace on top of this rock and decorated its sides with colourful frescoes. On a small plateau about halfway up the side of this rock he built a gateway in the form of an enormous lion, the huge front legs of which are still visible.

I’ve been there and climbed it. It’s a very busy tourist site, and the long, steep, narrow staircases all the way to the top aren’t for everyone, and there’s so many people and groups it’s hard to get a clean shot anyway. From the top, it’s a nice view out over the jungle, and interesting to wander around the ruins, but you can’t really get an appreciation for the geographical wonder of what you’re actually standing on. From the air however, it’s mind-blowing! And besides, its a great excuse to fly in a helicopter, and also see the hotel from the air!

We’ll be done by early evening, and you can enjoy sunset drinks by the pool before dinner, after which I hope you still have some energy join me on a little excursion I’ve organised to the nearby Popham’s Arboretum for a private guided night walk to look for Loris (a tiny nocturnal primate with adorably big eyes)! Fingers crossed!

After last night’s Loris hunt, we’ll let you sleep in this morning. After a leisurely breakfast and checkout, we'll first visit the nearby world heritage Dambulla Cave Temples - an amazing set of caves carved out by Buddhist monks as far back as the 1st century BC! Full of colourful Buddhist sculptures, ancient alfresco paintings etc. It’s one of the most beautiful and impressive temples in Sri Lanka and a chance to absorb some cultural history, so it’s worth checking out! After lunch we continue our 3hrs to Kandy, the second largest city in Sri Lanka, and famed for its gems and jewels (if anyone’s in the market we can visit a government-approved jeweller, even just to look is pretty cool! Sri Lanka is especially famous for its sapphires! Later, we’ll check into our boutique, 5-star 'Mountbatten Bungalow'. Merging colonial charm with an air of modernity, this relaxing estate was Lord Louis Mountbatten’s hillside getaway during World War 2, with a lush green forest opening beyond the edge of the infinity pool, spilling down into the tranquil valley. You will soon see why this is one the most sought after stays in Kandy. We’ll likely arrive in the mid-late afternoon, so there might even be time to download some photos and hang out and enjoy the view with a local beer before dinner.

There’ll be birds zipping around the gardens before breakfast if you’re keen, but after we’re fed and caffeinated, we’re headed off for a bit of a cultural experience, to The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. Located in the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy, this World Heritage temple houses the relic of the tooth of the Buddha. Inside a normally sealed inner, upstairs, gold-plated, elephant-tusk framed chamber of the temple, there is a jewel-studded gold vessel, inside which is a smaller, equally bejewelled case, and inside that is literally a piece of one of Buddha’s teeth, recovered from the ashes of his funeral fire. Since ancient times, this relic has played a hugely important role in Sri Lankan politics - it was believed that whoever holds this relic holds the governance of the country. Many wars were fought over more than a thousand years by various kings to control this relic, it’s been hidden and stolen and killed for and gifted over the centuries, and the legends around it are almost as spectacular as the astonishing force of the devotion of Buddhists to this sacred site and relic today.

To give you a memorable experience of this, you’re welcome to take part in the hectic 9:30 am morning ceremony, where thousands and thousands of worshipers pour into the temple and up the stairs to file past a door leading to the inner chamber that is briefly opened to allow the devoted a quick glance into the blinding gold room containing the vessel that contains the case that contains the relic, before you then can make an offering (we’ll provide you with some lotus flowers to give) and spill onwards into the rest of the temple, snapping some amazingly colourful photos of the dancing, drumming, golden architecture, a huge Buddhist statue behind tables overflowing with offerings etc. It’s quite full-on, and totally unforgettable, and you’re very welcome and able to take as many photos of the ceremony as you like. The strength of the devotees faith is very memorable.

We a have long way to drive today, so after the ceremony we’ll head off for the approx. 5-6hr drive to the east coast to Yala National Park, with a stop for lunch on the way at the township of Ella. Why stop in Ella? Because just out of town there’s a beautiful old ‘nine-arch bridge’ that’s 91m long, 24m high and built entirely without steel - just stone and cement - which photogenically spans a misty green jungle valley. Better yet, it’s still in use, and at 3:30 pm, a little blue passenger train might snake its way across. Train timetables here are notoriously unreliable though, so chances are we won’t see it, but it’s worth a try, and just seeing the bridge is impressive, and it requires a short 3-wheeler ‘tuk-tuk’ adventure drive to get there anyway - good fun!

Finally we’ll arrive at our home for the next 3 nights, 'Jetwing Safari Camp' which is located at the edge of Yala National Park, Sri Lanka’s most popular natural reserve, which features the highest concentration of leopards in the world, as well as sloth bears, elephants, and a kaleidoscope of other wildlife. Yala stretches from the untamed coast of the Indian Ocean (right out the front of the camp), all the way to the south-east of Sri Lanka, covering several thousand acres. Get ready for some serious wildlife action over the next few days.

Today’s a full-day safari drive in Yala National Park! Wildlife central! We’ll leave early, pre-dawn, to ensure our two jeeps are among the first vehicles in the park to make the most of the sunrise lighting and get time with any wildlife that’s conveniently lounging beside the roads before things get busier and hotter later in the morning. We’ll take a picnic breakfast with us which we can enjoy at a scenic place when we get hungry, and we’ll then continue prowling around photographing everything from jackals, water buffalo, deer, monkeys, wild peacocks and dozens of other birds, squirrels, lizards, wild boar, crocodiles, maybe the odd elephant and hopefully some leopards or sloth bears! Brace yourself - it’s a very busy park with lots of jeeps - compared to say Kenya or Botswana, and depending how the wildlife sightings are going on a given day, there can end up being frustrating traffic jams queuing up to try and get a glimpse of a leopard or bear if it’s been staying in the one spot for a while and everyone’s keen to see it. So long as we’ve already got some shots of that species, it’s more pleasant for us to prowl around on our own in the quieter parts of the park and enjoy all the other species, and perhaps stumble upon our own highlights anyway!

There’s an enforced quiet period from midday until 2pm every day to give the wildlife a break, and during this time vehicles are not allowed to be driving around. We’ll be keen for a break by then too, so we’ll head to a quiet shady spot by the river, enjoy a picnic lunch, and chill out for a few hours. You can maybe even have a nap on a blanket on the sandy riverbank, or go wandering around on foot to photograph kingfishers and monkeys (who amusingly arrive at lunchtime like clockwork). Staying inside the park over lunch like this not only means we get to make the most of our time and have a pleasant picnic, but it also means when 2pm comes and we’re allowed to start driving again, we’re already in the heart of the park, rather than queuing up back out at the gate, joining the convoy coming back in. We’ll continue exploring Yala for the rest of the afternoon and then head back to our luxury safari camp to download, recharge and relax with dinner.

Yesterday was a super long day, so this morning we’re letting you sleep in, download and edit some photos, enjoy the pool etc while we fit in a few more one-on-one photo sessions with some of you, and after a fancy lunch we’ll head back in for an afternoon safari drive in Yala, for a few hundred more photos! Our last night here, so we’ll make dinner extra special.

We get one last crack at Yala this morning, as by now you’ll know how the park works, what to expect, what photos you need to try and improve, what particular animals we still need to find, and can afford to be a little bit more selective and focused. So again, an early start for a slightly shorter morning safari drive, heading back out just in time to catch the last of the incredible breakfasts back at the hotel. Then we’ll pack up, check out and hit the road.

Today we’re headed down to the very southern tip of Sri Lanka, but around lunch time we’ll pass Udawalawe to do something pretty special: There’s an Elephant Transit Home here, beside a national park, established in 1995 by the Sri Lanka Department of Wildlife Conservation. Mid afternoon they bottle-feed their young elephants with a public viewing that we’ll watch with everyone at a distance, as the elephants need to be able to be returned to the wild. While I gather there’s another more touristy and questionable elephant ‘orphanage’ elsewhere in the country, this organisation does legitimately good work and deserves all the help it can get. The human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka is nothing short of appalling, and the work this centre does to treat injured and raise orphaned elephants to return to the wild is as heartwarming as it is important, hopefully preventing these sub-species from going extinct in the not too distant future. Being government run, cash donations can’t be given to the centre, but they publicly appeal for a certain kind of milk powder which they need in enormous quantities and we’ll bring them heaps. We also know their head doctor, and he’ll give us a list of life-saving medicines and drugs that we can buy from a human pharmacy which they desperately need and can’t normally get from the public. I’ll spend a chunk of profits from this tour to bring them a significant donation of elephant-saving supplies on your behalf. Last time they were so thankful we got a special behind the scenes tour, including through their elephant hospital - a moving experience. Thank you for coming on this tour to allow me to assist this important and worthwhile conservation initiative.

After this, we'll head on about two more hours to our 5-star, oceanfront 'Fortress Resort & Spa' for the next 2 nights.

Our objective this morning is to try and see the largest animal that has ever lived - the Blue Whale! Sri Lanka is one of the best places in the world to spot them, and we’re in the right place at the right time, however it’s a big ocean, and we still need luck! It’s a 50/50 chance - so let’s try! Blue whales can stay underwater for 30 minutes or longer, but around here they will stay down for about 8 minutes, and then come to the surface somewhere (basically anywhere other than where you expected) and do a series of 4-6 breaths with just a shallow dive between each one, and once fully recovered they end with a much steeper, deeper dive (usually showing their tail on their way down), they’ll then be gone again for another 8 minutes. So, you can imagine how this works: about 7 minutes after a tail-dive, everyone starts scanning the endless horizon on all sides, hoping to spot the first blow when the whale finally resurfaces (likely many hundreds of meters away, if we can even find it again at all), and the boat then has a few brief minutes at most to get over there and try for a closer view before it’s over again.

There’s two types that operate out here. There’s large 2-level, ferry boats that take a few hours to get out there, are crowded with hundreds of people, and are so slow that unless the whale accidentally happens to surface next to them, these boats don’t have much hope of getting much closer before it’s gone again. So, the other kind of boat - the ones we’ll use - are smaller speedboats, for expensive private charter. Much faster they can zip out to the whale area in less than half an hour, and when the whale surfaces, they can race over and be on top of it in time to enjoy a few up-close and personal blows. It’s epic, but also not very ethical. We don’t need to get that close, or pressure the whale so much that sometimes they cut their recovery breaths short and just try to swim away. So, we won’t be deliberately forcing ourselves close enough to chase them with a GoPro on a stick held underwater. If one happens to surface close enough then great, bring your GoPro, but it’s unlikely.

The main objective here is to see a blue whale from the boat (actually we’ll charter two boats so there’s plenty of room), see its towering blow and admire it’s hugely long, mottled blue form slip though the waves, and try for a tail shot as it dives. The secondary objective here is to try and let you see it from the air - which apart from being in the water with it (illegal here), is the only way to truly appreciate the length and incredibly streamlined form of these enormous torpedoes. We can’t get a helicopter to do this, but we have managed to get very special permission from the civil aviation authority and from the department of defence to be able to fly our drone here, which we’ll try for again each year, so can race right over there in the drone rather than the boat, and hopefully get some epic footage you can watch in real-time, and I’ll also give everyone on the tour a copy of it. It’ll be a team effort.

After hopefully a successful morning with the biggest animal on the planet, we’ll head back to port, spend a bit of time photographing the fishing boats, colourful piles of nets and floats, and expanses of drying fish, before heading back to lunch at our fancy hotel.

In the afternoon we’ll try to fit in an Adobe Lightroom tutorial for anyone who’s keen to learn to enhance their photos, as well as do the last few one-on-one sessions. It’s also a great chance to download/cull your photos, or relax in the pool etc. As the lighting starts to become golden in the evening, a short walk along the coast will bring us to the place where traditionally, the local fishermen used to perch out in the surf on precarious, pole-mounted stands to cast into the ocean. Silhouetted against the sunset, this can make for quite a photogenic, traditional scene, although the fishermen have realised there’s more (and easier) money to be made as photography models than actually catching fish, and so now it’s a bit of a setup, with each ‘fisherman’ collecting a fee from tourists before going out to climb up and pose. But hey, it still looks cool, and why not pay them for their efforts in helping us get a nice photo? Good on them. When it gets too dark for photos we can head our way back to the hotel for dinner.

We could have happily finished the tour right now, having enjoyed our fill of the best wildlife of Sri Lanka, but it didn’t seem quite right to come all this way, and not hop next door to India and try and see a Tiger! Right?! So, that’s what we’re going to do today! We’ll pack up, have breakfast and check out and drive the 3hrs from here to the airport back in Colombo. Once there, we’ll check-in for our flight to India, have lunch and get ready for our flight to Delhi! The 3.5 hr flight lands in Delhi early evening, from where we’ll be taken to our hotel for dinner and get a good night’s sleep before part two of this adventure starts tomorrow!

One of the best - if not THE best - place to see wild tigers in the world is Bandhavgarh National Park. It’s a 105 sq km park (with an additional 400 sq km of surrounding buffer area), and boasts the highest density of Bengal tigers in India. The problem is, it’s 800 km (15hr drive) from Delhi. The fastest way to get there is to fly from Delhi to the closest airport, which is Jabalpur, a much more manageable 3.5 hr drive from the national park. This flight departs Delhi early afternoon, so we have time in the morning to do a photo review session with you all, go through some of your photos and see what each other’s been shooting, maybe practice editing etc.

We’ll check out a bit before lunch, head to the domestic terminal, check-in, find some lunch in the airport and fly the 1.5hrs to Jabalpur, saving about 12hrs of driving! On arrival we’ll be driven to Bandhavgarh (3.5 hours) and finally check into our home for the next 3 nights, the incredibly beautiful and intimately small luxury eco lodge ‘Bamboo Grove’.

Ok so tigers are the name of the game here, as many of the other animals will be the same as we’ve already photographed in Sri Lanka (but not all). So, it’ll be a combination of chasing every lead, sometimes waiting super patiently if we hear monkey or deer alarm calls to see if a tiger might just step out of the bushes, and when we have no current lead, just cruising around and around, with everyone doing their best to spot large stripy cats or footprints that might lead us to them! To maximise your comfort and increase our tiger spotting chances, we’re fanning out in 3 safari jeeps...

Each jeep is designed to carry 6 guests + 1 driver + 1 naturalist, so we will have heaps of room to ensure we are not in each other’s way. Also, generally tourists do a separate morning (finishes at 11am) and afternoon safari drive (starts at 3pm), but as we did back in Yala, we’re going to go the extra mile and stay for a full day’s safari drive today, with picnic breakfast, lunch and snacks etc. Not only does this give us an extra 4 hours tiger time, it actually comes with other privileges including ‘VIP Status’ which importantly entitles us to change ‘zones’ within the park whenever we need, so we can go wherever we hear news of tiger sightings. Everyone else who’s not a VIP (it’s $408 USD/person and they only issue it to a maximum of 5 jeeps per day anyway) is allocated a particular zone within the park, and even if there’s tigers seen just in the zone next to you, you’re not allowed to cross. We also get to sneak in 15 min earlier than everyone else, and stay 15 minutes after for more golden lighting! It’s pretty special!

So, today we’ll be doing exactly that, a full day, 12-hr safari with VIP multi-zone status in one of the best places on Earth to see tigers. Fingers crossed we get a sighting, and maybe even some good photos! Regardless, we’ll still have a great adventure, and the park is full of other wildlife too, including leopards, sambar, barking deer, blue-bull deer, nilgai, wild boar, gaur, chausingha and chinkara, the Asiatic jackal, Bengal fox, sloth bear, ratel, grey mongoose, striped hyena, jungle cat, and over 250 species of birds including cranes, kites, crested serpent eagles, black vultures, Egyptian vultures, grey hornbill, kingfishers etc.

Today we’re back at it again, looking for more tigers, although we’ll split it up into a seperate morning and afternoon safari drive, and come back to the lodge for lunch.

We’re heading off today, but we have one last short morning safari drive before we go. We’ll be back in time for breakfast at the lodge, check out, retrace the 3.5 hr drive to Jabalpur airport and fly back to Delhi. We’ll land early evening, and head back to the same hotel we stayed on the way in. Tonight’s our final dinner, so we’ll head to a nice local restaurant to celebrate and reflect on all the highlights of the past 2 weeks - the new animal species seen and photographed, new friends made, new skills learnt, new tastes, sounds, smells and experiences of Sri Lanka and India, colourful new threads that will now forever be woven into the rich tapestry of your life!

That’s it guys! There’s no group breakfast or anything this morning as some of you might be flying out early, or others might be sleeping in, or even spending some extra days in India... The Taj Mahal isn’t too far away...

IMPORTANT - Ensure you have read our Tour Booking Conditions prior to booking. The document covers everything from your rights, inclusions and payment schedule, to our cancellation policy and extent of liability.

Unlike most of our tours, India & Sri Lanka don't do 'twins share' rooms very effectively, and so we require solo travellers to pay a single supplement to have a room on their own.

All our photo tours are subject to minimum numbers. Please ensure you have read our tour booking conditions for our cancellation policy (above).

You must obtain your own travel insurance, and it is recommended you ensure it covers trip cancellation up to the value you are investing in this tour (price of tour, your flights etc).

All meals are provided, drinks however are extra and will generally be charged to you room, and you'll settle your own bills when you checkout.

Price does not include flights from your home town to start in Colombo (Sri Lanka), nor your flight home from Delhi (India) at the end. We do include the one-way flight from Sri Lanka to India during the tour.

We do not loan out our own camera equipment for this tour. Be prepared to be self sufficient regarding your camera gear.

Depending on your nationality, you may require a visa to enter Sri Lanka and/or India, and you will need a valid passport etc. It is up to you to ensure you have all the required travel documents and visas to arrive at the start of the tour and to be let into India. Pay special attention to the India visa system which is confusing. The 30-day visa needs to be applied for within 30 days of arrival, so either get that visa in the weeks just before, or buy a 12-month visa for not much more, if you want to be organised ahead of time.

A non-refundable, non-transferable $1,000 USD booking deposit is required.