From Elephants to Monkeys

Saturday, July 18, 2015
Kandamala, Sri Lanka
We left our hotel and headed inland. Plenty of fascinating sights as we left Negombo and went into the countryside. Very much like areas of Thailand we have been to, and no doubt what Phuket was like 30 years ago.

Despite Negombos catholic composition, Sri Lanka is mainly buddhist . Manoj is Buddhist but does send his children to catholic school.

Sri Lanka has been under the rule of the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British over the years and hence has been heavily influenced by those cultures. Most of the Sri Lankan language originated from the Portuguese.

We travelled inland to the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage.

There are lots of stray dogs on the road which become a bit of a traffic hazard. We saw lots of monkeys too. The driving is not as dangerous as Cambodia....but it's pretty bad! There are soooo many tuk tuks - not so many motorbikes. Unlike Thailand where they are really only used for tourism, they seem to be the vehicle of choice here for most households. They are in all sorts of colours.

The elephant orphanage is a huge tourist trap where 90 elephants are herded through the park at various times and the mahouts are very vigilant with trapping tourists into paying for extras like photos . I knew this in advance so was not caught. As far as elephant orphanages go, the Elephant Nature Park near Chiangmai in Thailand is a far superior experience as the elephants seem much happier and it is easier to get up close. But if I had not been to Chiangmai, then I would have appreciated Pinnewala a lot more.

We had lunch in a restaurant overlooking a beautiful river where the elephants bathe. A highlight was when an elephant grabbed a shawl off a lady and the tried to swat other elephants with it and had a grand old time. Most amusing. There are approximately 7000 elephants in Sri Lanka. Given that the island is the size of Tasmania, that's a lot!!

There are squirrels here too. Not sure what I was expecting...but they are like rats that can jump from tree to tree.

We have about 5 hours of driving today - hence I can write this! The scenery is breathtaking (Tim thinks a bit of Thailand....a bit of Fiji) with lots of interesting sights on the way amongst the 800 dogs.

Some interesting things we saw on our journey...a funeral procession, a bakery van with music (like the ice cream truck), construction workers in thongs, gold Buddhas on the hills, ornate temples, lottery ticket kiosks, a wedding, black faced and red faced monkeys, a mongoose, and so much more!

We have then checked into our next hotel, but more on that later!
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Donna
2015-07-19

Sounds interesting so far...

2025-02-09

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