The Gal Oya boat safari on the Senanayake Samudra reservoir offers something genuinely unavailable anywhere else in Sri Lanka: wild Asian elephants observed swimming between forested islands in the open water of a vast inland lake. The sight of a family herd crossing open water – calves swimming alongside adults, the matriarch reading the current – is one of those wildlife encounters that remains vividly memorable long after more famous sightings have blurred together. The park’s extreme remoteness keeps visitor numbers very low, and the behavioural freedom that results in the wildlife is immediately apparent.