Vijay and Shefali's TAtW

We visited an elephant orphanage on our way from Colombo to Sigiriya (more on that later), and I have to say I felt conflicted. In one sense, they are (allegedly) attempting to do a noble thing. They take elephants left behind by their packs (usually at a young age) and care for and feed them for the remainder of their days. Elephants can live for like 80 years, this is no small responsibility. I read that they have the largest amount of elephants cared for in captivity of anywhere in the world. They also take in injured and behaviorally unstable elephants. One in particular had stepped on a land mine – it blew two of its feet clean off. It was sad watching it hobble around and stand up all crooked on two bent up stumps, but it didn’t seem to mind when people were throwing it bananas. And that’s another thing – they round them up for feeding and bathing time to show all the tourists. Now, I’m not a robot – there are few things more adorable than a baby elephant drinking milk from a big glass bottle. But they’re animals, and they’re huge and dangerous, and they know food when they see it, so they need to be chained up to keep from hurting themselves, each other or any onlookers (paying customers) because they decided to rush the buffet. And there was this one, he was chained up and just pulling so hard. I thought he was going to pop his foot off at the ankle, or whatever joint they have down there. It was hard to watch. You could tell it felt unnatural, being chained up like that. Bathing time was at a river down the road. We got there a little early and there was a little guy who kept sticking his trunk out at me. That’s him in the picture above. I’m not gonna lie, it’s been one of the high points of the trip and made me feel kind of special. Then there was this one next to it with an orange blotchy pattern on it’s face. A much bigger one. Long story short it’s hard to tell if an elephant is playful or dangerous when it looks like it’s rushing you. So at that particular moment, I understood the chains. Ironically at that moment none of the elephants were chained. But it was incredible to see all these enormous animals herded out running down the street. I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like that in my life and was grateful for the opportunity. You can see it for yourself in the video embedded at the bottom. Link to the gallery at [1].

Video of elephants:

[1] Pictures of elephants