Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage

Across from the bank of the Oya River, in a shaded area of 25 acres lies the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage. One location where you are sure to see elephants while traveling around Sri Lanka. Originally developed in 1972 it began as an organization to take care of orphaned elephants from the forest and after several moves and many years has continued to provide care from orphans but has also developed a captive breeding program and serves as a safe home for elephants that have been seriously injured (one of the elephants there is blind, another lost part of her front leg due from a land mine). 

As you can imagine a large group of Asian elephants makes for a popular tourist attraction. Twice a day the elephants are walked across the road - traffic coming to a halt as an airhorn blows a warning that the elephants are approaching - to bathe and play in the river. This is the place where the tourists flock. Restricted to the rocks behind a chain from there you can watch the elephants until you tire. Seeing the affection between certain pairs and catching a few frolicking together or blowing water in the air. 

The vendors are not quite as enamored with the elephants despite admitting they are their source of income. Every time the walk by the racks from outside have to be drug out of the way, and beware the elephant with a chain! It has a history of being aggressive. Luckily it is the first one by, and once past you can creep out of the stall to watch the others parade past. 

The rest of the day the elephants roam a small field, eating from the vegetation that is trucked in for their consumption. The smaller babies are restricted to a pen where you can touch their bristly hair as you pet their back or head. Pet an elephant! After all when else will you have that opportunity?

On safari in Sri Lanka

Another of the stops that we made was a short visit to Yala National Park in the Southeastern corner of Sri Lanka. One good thing about jet lag is that it sure makes it easy to wake up for a 5:00 safari - didn't even require an alarm clock. We headed to Yala because it has the world's (?) largest concentration of leopards. Not that that means that leopards are easy to find. Other animals are much more common…we saw a plethora of water buffalo, several jackals, wild boar, mongoose, spotted deer, peacocks a plenty, crocodiles, an eagle, monitor lizards, lots of colorful birds - including the national bird of Sri Lanka, and finally….as we were getting close to having to leave the park, all but hidden back in the trees a leopard. Or was it a pair? Hard to tell, but at one point I thought that maybe I saw two waving tails. My pictures - poor as they are - are still a better view of it then I had with my eye (its all about the zoom!). At least I was able to leave satisfied, knowing I had "seen" a leopard even if we didn't manage to see an elephant despite being told they sometimes roam through the hotel grounds.

Tea, tea, as far as you can see

The last week of my vacation I headed to Sri Lanka. With just a week there we decided to do an overview of some of what the country had to offer…namely tea plantations, national parks and the beach. I've been to tea areas before. After all Turkey has a vibrant tea culture with tea grown in the Rize area and India proudly boasts its Darjeeling tea. However I ended up being overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of the land dedicated to growing tea in Sri Lanka. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the tea plantations that seem to be endless to my eyes account for just 4% of the land mass of Sri Lanka. I then got more curious - turns out that tea only counts for 2% of GDP but totals in at 15% of exports. It might be 15% of Sri Lankan exports but it accounts for up to 23% of the world tea market (ranking number one or two - Kenya is a close competitor).

As we drove through the tea country and I watched women working in fields to pick the tips off the plants, often on hillsides that I couldn't even imagine balancing on; I was struck by just how labor intensive this crop is. Employing over a million people, the tea sector employs at least 5% of the country's population. Many of those the men that care for the plants and spray pesticides from a container on their back and the women who strap a bag onto the back to place tea leaves in before accumulating them in a wicker basket earning around 500 rupees a day (according to our driver), approximately $3.80. And yet the smiles on their faces are big. They chat as they go. They leave their houses in the early morning to walk to the current field they are working on, taking a break mid morning for breakfast. They lay a wooden stick on top of already picked plants as a guide for how far down to pick the next ones. They take a break for lunch. They pick all afternoon. Then they get up and do it all over again the next day. Think about that the next time you drink a cup of Ceylon tea.