So on the first day of travels with my driver, Daggat (pronounced Jagat, which took me some getting used to until I finally got it right at the end of our time together!) I got up really early and headed off to the elephant orphanage in Pinnawela, with a picnic breakfast provided free of charge by my hotel. We made a few ‘photo opportunity’ stops along the way, after one of which I returned to the car to find that my breakfast box was being devoured by a bunch of ants. Needless to say I quickly lost my appetite. Anyway, the photo stops were great, but I was dying to get to the orphanage because I had read so much about it. We arrived at about 10.30, just before the 11.00 am feed of the baby elephants, giving me a bit of time to wander round and see some of the ‘oldies’.
At 11am Daggat got me a great spot at the front of the pen where they feed the baby elephants so I could watch the bottle feeding. It is mainly done for the tourists and they make even more money out of it by making a small number of people pay to hand-feed the babies themselves and get their photos taken, etc. but I wasn’t interested in this as it just seemed a pointless money-making exercise. I preferred instead to just stand back and watch in awe.
After the feeding had finished (about 20 mins later) everyone then rushed down to the nearby river to witness the elephants going for their daily bathe. Now I can honestly say this is one of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had. Daggat again bagged me a great seat at a cafe next to the river where you can sit and look down at the elephants. After about ten minutes of waiting you could hear the clanking of chains and a noise like I have never heard: the elephants all trumpeting as they marched together down to the water, led by a few of the men from the orphanage. They all ambled into the water and some of the more adventurous ones even managed to make it across to the bank on the other side. The funniest moment was when one of the largest and oldest-looking elephants just flopped straight down onto his side and lay there waiting for one of the men to wash him, as if to say “it’s far too hot for me to do anything myself, so you better bathe me, mister!”. It was absolutely amazing and something I’d recommend everyone who visits Sri Lanka should do.
This is awesome! It looks like you had a great time and the elephants are so cute!
I got my photo taken in Australia while I was feeding an elephant…I fell into the tourist trap :-/
Thanks Lauren, I really did have an amazing time. I think we’ve all fallen into tourist traps doing things that we want to tick off our wishlist, don’t beat yourself up about it. Even in a great place like this that’s doing good work they were still trying to get people to pay to bottlefeed the babies which annoyed me but the country is still trying to recover from the effects of the tsunami so they try and make money any way they can.