A visit to Elephant Orphanage and Kandy, Sri Lanka

Well, Elephants are the same, wherever you are and indeed, many of them are stinky.

I took a trip from Colombo to Kandy, and decided to visit an Elephant Orphanage on the way there.

Pinnawela elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka

I was a little annoyed that a foreigner needs to pay Rs$1250 to get in. After entering, I immediately noticed the stench of elephants and though there are no guides or signs to guide you where to go, you can easily follow the elephant smell and find the elephants. Anyway, its hard for elephants to hide right?

Though saved in the Elephant Orphanage, many of the elephants are still chained and kept in a location for visitors to take photos.

But later, I found elephants who are free to roam and you can go up close to feed them and pat them.

Overall, the view was pretty good, and you can view mountains in the distance. Lots of Photo opportunities!

But still Rs$1250 for probably 30 minutes of viewing elephants? I'm not sure its worth the money. But if you have never been close to a real elephant or never been to a zoo, maybe its time to visit the elephants there.

After some time and money spent, I'm off to Kandy. We stopped at a popular spot for photographs and the view was pretty awesome. There are also local people selling fruits and snacks! You can also see Adam's peak in the distance.

Just an advice. DO NOT TRY THE CORN! It is the worst corn in my life. I can't believe that there is ever such thing as "unsweetened corn" and if you ever feel like eating cardboard tasting corn.. Feel free to buy some and try.

Then I arrived at a tea plantation on the way. It was a tiny one, but still kinda cool.

There is tea... lots of tea!!

The air outside is cool and you can try out the tea for free in the cafe and they are really good and definitely a good buy as well.

There are lots of greens and they practice cultivating cross species and being around lots of tea, is somehow calming and nice! We even got a free demo on plucking tea leaves.

After getting lots of tea, we head towards Kandy and the Temple of the Buddha's tooth.

Sri Lanka 2009

Arrived in Sri Lanka. 22:20 (10:20pm) and Navin is not here at airport.

Time now is 23:38 (11:38pm) Navin cannot read time so Navin was late.

The next morning, we visited the dirty beach next to his house.

It has a railway track, but just lots of trash.

Then we got food at the food Court... Wow! They actually have one here.. But its Colombo, the Capital city of Sri Lanka? (Not much of a city though)

We saw some man on man love on lare posters,

We had basically the best foods money can buy. Its not exactly cheap, but not too expensive either.

The next night, we had a BBQ, it was great!

I was informed by Navin that you can only get fresh meats from a few places as the "conveniences stores" have stale stuff. But then again, Navin does not know how to get around even outside his house. he just takes the 3 wheelers everywhere!

Data has weight?

Don't you just love it when people ask such questions on Google or Yahoo?

Maybe data really has weight

--Iron Bowl