Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage

Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage is one of Sri Lankas's allegedly 'must see' tourist attractions... I went last time I was here, about 10 years ago, and thought it was OK, but if I'm honest I wasn't that fussed about going again. However, we were invited to go by some some friends of ours here - Rukshan, Shamali, and their little daughter Rukshi (family of some of our friends back in Bradford) and Noah was really exited about seeing real elephants, so we were very happy to go, just for the day out with them. It's about a two hour drive there from Negombo, so we all set off in Rukshans car about 9.00am in the morning. Really enjoyed the drive up there...plenty to see. 

Local price for entry is 200 rupees. Tourist price for entry is 2000 rupees. Fair enough, someones got to keep the elephants fed I guess. Once over the initial "ooh, look at the elephants..." thing, I found myself thinking more of "Hmm, look at the tourists..."It was bizzarre, hundreds of tourists (mostly western, though some large parties of school kids) all standing around pointing cameras, camera phones, ipads, video cameras etc at the elephants.

I like animals, and yes, looking at a fully grown elephant, or even a baby one is pretty cool. But I was bemused by the level of excitement shown by the tourists...and the slightly surreal nature of (as Rukshan said) 'a row of elephants, standing opposite a row of white elephants', all pointing cameras. It was a bit like watching two opposing forces about to do battle. There were a few staff standing around with long poles to stave off the elephants in the event of a stampede, but apart from the the only thing separating the two sides (tourists and elephants) was a row of small boulders. I had to laugh when I overheard a teacher shouting at some members of his school party who were being a bit over zealous with their camera phones; "Come on girls, think about the life insurance!" 

So after standing around having their pictures taken the elephants are herded into a big shed where the tourists all go and stand and gawp at the elephants being fed milk in a bottle; judging by the amount of milk an elephant can get through I guess this is where much of the 2000 rupee entry fee goes. After that, and many more thousands of photos, they were herded out of the main orphanage complex, across the road, down the 'high street' (long row of tourist shops) to the river where they all splash around for a bit, and have their photos taken a few more thousand times by the (by now) embarrassingly over excited tourists. 

Naturally I took some photos...of the tourists; 

An Elephant! 

and another one. 

Tourists watch an elephant eating some leaves.

and queue up to have their photo taken with one. 

The row of tourists faces the row of elephants

The two opposing sides...

A herd of elephants come wandering down the high street.

...and a herd of tourists frantically take pictures.

The elephants have a splash about and the tourists take another few hundred photos.  The slide shows when they get home from holiday will be endless...

I have to say, we had a great day! Really enjoyed watching the tourists watching the elephants. I've always been a people watcher...this felt a bit like a people safari. 

And of course Noah had a great time, and it was great to spend the day with Rukshan and family!