I have mixed feelings about the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage. By definition, an orphanage is a great place, but a commercial one might completely defeat its purpose. I’m always careful when I pick animal encounters on my travels because I don’t want the animals to be exploited, that’s why I chose the Mahout experience in Thailand rather than the basket ride. Sometimes it’s impossible to know beforehand what you’re getting yourself into.
Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage
The Elephant Orphanage is a one hour tuk-tuk ride away from Kandy, so you could easily plan it as a half-day trip. Keep in mind that a tuk-tuk ride is not the most scenic way to travel because you can’t see anything from your seat and you’re basically just breathing in the city smoke and exhaust fumes all the way there and back.
When you go to Elephant Orphanage it’s important to plan your time. Our guide was super excited because we would make it in time of the baby elephant feeding at 1:15pm. Although, I wish I didn’t have to witness that. The moment we paid the 2,500 LKR (17 euro) and entered the “park” I had an eerie feeling.
It looked exactly like a zoo, which is not how an orphanage is supposed to look. The elephants had way too much interaction with humans. When I saw the baby elephants running to tourists who were holding big milk bottles, my heart ached. It’s quite clear that elephants who come into the orphanage, never leave because they’ve gotten used to humans too much. Our guide was going out of his way to get me a bottle too, which is a kind gesture from his side, but when I found out I asked him to stop because I would never pay the extra money to partake in this.
Instead, my friend and I walked around the orphanage. The “cages” near the entrance are a sorry sight. The elephants are chained to tree trunks and standing in cement enclosures.
The babies were standing together in a small enclosure and they were eagerly awaiting feeding time. There isn’t much supervision, so everyone got really close to the babies. I did too, and the baby grabbed my backpack and started pushing me around. Haha, needless to say I was terrified because even though it’s a baby he has a lot of strength and no one from the orphanage was there to help. After swinging me left to right he let go by himself.
That’s when these babies were taken out of their enclosures to be bottle fed by tourists.
We continued walking around near the entrance, and that’s were I saw something I had never seen before. An elephant was being sprayed down by a hose. This of course is quite a common sight, but the elephant seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it. He lay down on his side and he propped his leg up to feel the water on his tummy. At first I thought he was distressed, but after observing him a few minutes I realized he was really happy. Our guide told us it was because this elephant couldn’t go down to the water, so with the hose it’s the only way he can get refreshed.
We had seen everything at the front of the orphanage so we moved to the back. That’s where my heart my a little happy jump. There were so many elephants there (in total there are 92 elephants in the orphanage, most of them were standing in the back). They were all free to roam around and there were no enclosures. Even better, it was a woodland kind of area and the little ones had plenty of room to play around.
We observed the elephants there for a while, and then our guide ran up to us and told us to go to the shops. Not to buy the paper made from elephant dung or any other souvenirs. He wanted us to be ready for the elephant march. At 2pm a bell rings and all 92 elephants (apart from the babies and the one that was hosed down) make their way through the shopping area and through the streets of the town to go down to the river for a refreshing bath.
This was a fantastic sight. Some shopkeepers closed their shutters in order to stop the elephants from grabbing any of their merchandise. You have to picture this, it was a tight street and a lot of elephants. There were only a few guardians with them so they could basically do whatever they wanted. Some even carried logs with them.
The river is right next to the shopping area. It’s such a magnificent sight to see all these elephants running into the water and completely submerging themselves. Some lay down and were massaged by their keepers. It was clear that the elephants loved this. The view was amazing and there was no interaction with tourists. This is what I came to the orphanage for: to see elephants who used to be mistreated enjoy their lives again. Our guide told us they spend most of the day in the river. They march down twice a day and since it’s worth seeing the march, check the timings before you go.
Bats
A friend of mine from The Netherlands told me she saw a lot of bats when she visited Kandy, and I felt sorry I missed out on them. Luckily, our tuk-tuk driver stopped (without us telling him to) when he saw a tree filled with bats. We didn’t really see them up close, but this was good enough for me.
Conclusion
As I said in the introduction, the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage gives me mixed feelings. To see the elephants bathing and playing in the river and standing free in the park made me really happy. On the other hand, I could’ve done without the bottle feeding. I do understand the plight the orphanage is in. They are committing to caring and feeding these elephants for the rest of the elephants’ lives, so the orphanage needs money and the best way is for tourists to pay for interaction. Luckily, they don’t bottle feed all babies at the premises only a select few. I think it’s worth visiting the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage because they are doing good work.
If anyone has visited and has a different opinion, please let me know in the comments.
