Day 6 - Elephant Orphanage

Next day we drove to the elephant orphanage at Pinnawela. Here we saw over 100 elephants - not all orphans, many new babies. We saw some being fed from bottles - huge bottles which are emptied in a few seconds and have to have constant refills. We also saw a poor blind tusker. He is well looked after, but cannot go anywhere by himself and is kept chained. He was eating some coconut branches when we saw him.

We had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the river where the elephants are taken every day for a swim and play in the water. We saw some of the bigger baby elephants ducking one of the small ones and the mother and sisters soon came to protect the little one. Just like naughty boys playing together.

On the way back to the hotel we made an excursion to the Temple of the Tooth Relic in Kandy. This is a very holy place for all Buddhists as it houses the tooth relic which was brought to Sri Lanka in the 4th century. Again, we left our shoes with the shoe wallah outside and had to pay 25 rupees to get them back.