Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage
Jackamy
Paul & Derry Harper
Thu 13 Jan 2011 17:24
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Thursday 13th January
We were up bright and early today as we've
hired a 24 seater coach along with Miss Tippy to travel around Sri Lanka for 6
days. After the lively sea's that we all had coming over from
Thailand everyone was excited to get off the boat and go exploring. We had
a whole array of clothes with us, warm clothes for the hill country, walking
boots, waterproof coats, sun dresses, trousers and cover-ups for the temples as
well as many other items so we had not packed lightly. It was a good job we had
a 24 seater for 10 of us as we needed a few seats for the baggage.
  Wearing all our clothes to aid
carrying!
We'd been warned about driving in Sri Lanka,
the roads are not in a very good condition and although somewhere may only seem
a few kilometers away, it can take you 5 times longer to get there than normal.
This first day at 288 km was always going to be the longest distance we
travelled but nothing could prepare us for just how long a day it would be. We
left at 6 in the morning and arrived at the hotel around 7 that evening,
stopping off on the way at an elephant orphanage.
  En route we passed a tsunami
memorial. In this area 1207 people were killed out of the 50,000 in Sri
Lanka.
  Paul and Brian trying to find a
monitor lizard skulking in the bushes..........Adam's Peak in the
background
  We drove past rubber tree
plantations
  Nik-nak shops lined the streets
in some areas
The government run orphanage was created to
protect abandoned or orphaned elephants. The guide book says that now it is one
of Sri Lanka's most popular attractions, and by the hordes of people I can see
that that is true. There are around 80 elephants of all ages who didn't look
very well looked after to me and I believe the Born Free Foundation has
expressed concern over the amount of contact the elephants have with the public
and the fact that the facility has been used for breeding, contrary to its
status as an orphanage.
The elephants are controlled by their
mahouts, who ensure they feed at the right times and don't endanger anyone as
they roam around the sanctuary area. This involves hitting them with metal
spiked sticks to control their behavior. We were there in time for the
feeding but after watching for probably less than a minute we left. The
elephants were chained to the floor whilst a mahout would feed it milk from a
bottle. Of course the whole point of this was that you could pay to have your
picture taken with them, the same as you could with them up in the
field where they "roam free". Sadly, a few days after visiting the
orphanage we read an article in the paper about the oldest and tallest elephant
at the sanctuary. He had died after they had failed to save him when he was
stabbed 3 times by the mahouts. It highlighted our strong feelings about the
orphanage, it is completely un-natural and is just a money making scheme,
unfortunately at the elephants expense. The cost to get into the sanctuary
was 2000 rupees for foreigners and 500 for locals. We thought that the
orphanage did redeem itself slightly as eating lunch beside the river whilst the
elephants bathed was quite a nice experience. But looking back now it was just
another ploy to get more money as the only place to see the bathing was in the
restaurants. Our trip had not started well!
   This one had lost part of its
leg in a landmine
 Feeding time!
  Bathing in the river, with the
mahouts close by...........Forcing a baby elephant to swim
Back on the bus, with moral running low we
made our way up to Sigiriya. We had yet to book any accommodation for the
evening and our guide Andrew kindly recommended somewhere, the Eden Garden
Hotel, which he assured us was a guesthouse. I know the clue is in the
name, but most places called hotels are in fact little guesthouses. Anyhow
it didn't read too badly in the guide book so we trusted him and booked it.
Although we arrived in the dark we could see clearly that the place was a
tired and old with dirty bedrooms and bathrooms. And to make matters worse they
served us cold chicken and chips for dinner!
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