Up Close and Personal with Sri Lankan Elephants

Sri Lankan elephant

Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Sri Lanka, and it’s not hard to see why. Where else can you be so close to so many elephants and watch them feeding and bathing in a scenic tropical environment? The joy is not just in seeing so many elephants in a natural habitat, but knowing that they are well cared for and managed.

There are plenty of photo opportunities here. The orphanage is set against a backdrop of the lush Sri Lankan hill country, on a twenty-five acre coconut grove in the Ma-Oya River valley.

The A$15 ticket Pinnawela entrance price gives you access to elephant feeding, the grazing area, village, shops, and river.  You can visit all areas, or stop and have a drink and meal at one of the local restaurants.

A daily routine of elephant feeding and bathing happens each morning and afternoon. Whatever time you arrive can experience the bathing and feeding, but allow yourself at least three hours there.

I arrived at 9am, in time for the morning bottle feeding of the baby elephants. They drink a powdered milk formula and you can hand feed them yourself. Then the elephants leave the feeding area and move up to an open gazing spot where they wander around and have a dust bath.  You can have a photo taken here. Just tip the mahout a dollar or so.  The role of the mahout is vital in managing human interactions with a group of such large animals. You tend to forget that these elephants are under control, as the mahouts are not at all intrusive. They are just there, keeping watch, prodding and directing the animals when needed. My guide said the elephants know and respond to the mahouts’ words and gestures. There are other elephant orphanages around the world, but with over sixty resident elephants, Pinnawela is reputedly the largest.

Each morning at 10am, the elephants walk leisurely down from the grazing area, through the narrow main street of the village, to have their morning bathe in the rapid waters of the Ma-Oya river.  Most tourists gather at the waters edge or stay higher up at one of the cafes which offer a good vantage point.

The elephant bathing is certainly the highlight of the day for both humans and animals. Elephants love water and these ones were dipping below the water, rubbing their backs against the rocks, squirting one another, lying on their sides and using their trunks as a natural snorkel. The river is shallow in parts with rocky rapids. Despite their huge size they are surprisingly delicate as they step across the rocks and stand with a bent leg on the rock, nicely posing for a photograph. Some of the elephants are real camera junkies and will oblige by coming up close. They are curious animals and their probing trunks will sniff out food you may have. Sliced mango pieces are highly prized. Conveniently, bags of mango food are for sale.

Some of the herd cross over to the river bank on the other side, taking soil there to spray over their backs, before returning back again to the water. It’s essential that elephants don’t over-heat so the river provides the opportunity for a cooling bath and a drink.

Some of these elephants have tusks, but most do not as the group consists mostly of females, with young. With Asian elephants only the males have tusks. These animals will charm you, especially the mothers and babies. Many young were still suckling and the clingy babies like to loop their trunks around the mother’s leg. Like humans the young ones have to learn how to behave, so bringing the orphaned elephants into a herd is important for their social development.

As you would expect these animals produce a fair amount of dung. A brilliant waste disposal solution has been devised: elephant dung paper.  Thankfully, after thorough washing, the dung fibres don’t smell at all. You can tour the dung paper factory and buy the paper at highly inflated prices. I suppose an elephant dung paper calendar could make a quirky souvenir.

You can’t actually ride the elephants at Pinnawela. The emphasis here is on care and conservation, but elephant rides are on offer elsewhere in Sri Lanka.

Pinnawela Elephants, Sri Lanka

This orphanage was established in 1975 as a home for injured and orphaned young elephants. It is now run by the Sri Lankan National Zoological Gardens with an emphasis on conservation. Funds collected from visitors contribute to the upkeep. There is not enough natural vegetation at Pinnawela to provide food for all the elephants, so large quantities of food are brought in daily. The set-up at Pinnawela simulates, as far as possible, conditions in the wild.  The orphanage has a captive breeding program and animals find their way from here to zoos around the world.

Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage is situated near the town of Kegalla, halfway between Colombo and Kandy. Hotels in Kandy will organise day trips to Pinnawela, including a visit to a local tea factory and spice gardens for around A$60. This is the price for car and driver-guide, so a group could share this cost.

Originally published in The West Australian Travel pages 2009.

Dixcove, Ghana 1973

The following piece originally appeared in the Katharine Susannah Prichard (KSP) Past Tense Anthology in June 2016 

Dixcove Fort, Ghana 1973

Words of Wisdom

We had been staying in the fishing village of Dixcove for over a week and had settled into a comfortable routine of ambling down to the beach each morning, and waiting by the boats to inspect the day's fishing catch in the afternoon.

On Saturday evening, we heard there was to be a local funeral and were eager to stay around for the experience. As darkness fell, villagers gathered in the dusty square, below the imposing stone walls of the Dixcove fort. Shops around the square were lit by kerosene lamps and some food sellers were hunched over smoky braziers, roasting cobs of corn.

From a side street, drums started up and a group of dancers approached the square. The mood was contagious, with locals joining in, and I felt a child's clammy hand grabbing mine, pulling me into the throng. I did my best to follow the confident dance moves of the local kids, swirling hips to the rhythm of the beat, until I spun out to take a break with my friends.

At this point an African gentleman approached us. His thick-framed spectacles gave him the look of a professor, marking him out from the other villagers.

'Good evening my friends, you are most welcome to Ghana. May I invite you to my house, to share my hospitality.'

We followed him several hundred metres out of town, until we reached a brightly lit house. The entrance was up a tiled staircase and through a porch, leading to a spacious lounge room. His house, with its fluorescent globes blazing, was in sharp contrast to the darkness outside. We were amazed – this was 1973 and no one in rural Ghana had electricity. This gentleman must be a person of some wealth and status, to have his own generator.

His wife brought us cake and cordial while we made ourselves comfortable on their vinyl upholstered chairs. After a few moments of polite chat the gentleman went to his book case and retrieved a small black book.

'Do you know this book?' He held the book with reverence, opening the front cover.

'It is called "The Axioms of Kwame Nkrumah". We known it as "the little black book". It contains words of wisdom from our former leader.'

He gestured to a framed black and white photo on the wall showing a distinguished Nkrumah wearing the traditional Ghanaian Kente cloth robe, draped across his shoulder. We nodded and politely sipped the sweet cordial. After a suitable interval of exchanging pleasantries, we thanked him and took our leave.

The following day I left Dixcove and continued travelling along the coast of Ghana to the capital Accra. I never discovered the identify of our mysterious African gentleman, but he had planted a seed, prompting me to find out more about his hero Nkrumah. Kwame Nkrumah was Ghana's first Prime Minister after the country gained independence from Britain. He was a freedom fighter who had a grand vision for a pan-African future, free from the bonds of colonialism and tribalism. In 1966, while on a state visit to North Vietnam, Nkrumah was overthrown in a coup. At that time his government was aligned with the Eastern Bloc. After Nkrumah's overthrow, Ghana shifted to align itself with the West. Kwame Nkrumah never returned to Ghana and spent his last years in exile, where he wrote his little black book. Much later it was claimed that the American CIA were behind the coup to overthrow him.

What had started out that night in Dixcove as a quest for an African cultural experience, lead to something much more, giving me an insight into Ghana's tortured history and politics. Today Nkrumah is revered in Ghana and in the year 2000 he was described by the BBC World Service an "International symbol of freedom as the leader of the first black African country to shake off the chains of colonial rule". Now, I am left wondering about western interference in Africa and whether colonialism has really ended.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, waiting for the fish

Fishing in Cambodia on the Ton Le Sap River

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, waiting for the fish

The 15 minute horn sounds, spreading word among the locals that the Cruiseco river boat is about to depart. It is still early morning and I am outside on our cabin balcony, perched on a plastic chair. The tropical heat is already building, coating my skin with sweat.

Overnight, the river level has dropped so that we are now wedged against the concrete wall of the Phnom Penh wharf. At eye level, I face onto an enormous rubber tyre, which has been hung there to protect the boat's hull. Several metres above me a lone fisherman, wearing shorts and a black I love Cambodia T-shirt waits, with net in hand, ready to cast. He looks down, sees me and smiles.

'You like Cambodia?' he says.

'Yes, it's beautiful,' I reply. 'Are you going to fish here?'

'Yes, just wait for boat go.'

'Do you catch many fish here?' I ask him.

'Sometime yes, sometime no.'

'Well, good luck today.'

'Good luck you too.'

Our boat's starts engine up and, as we move away from the wharf, we leave a vacant patch of swirling muddy-brown water. My fisherman immediately raises both arms and casts his weighted net into free water. Meanwhile, two more men arrive on the wharf, nets in hand. And then a small wooden craft appears on the shoreline, carrying three fishermen with a much larger net, which they promptly drop overboard. They start up their boat's motor with a pop and an acrid-smelling smoke cloud spreads. Manoeuvring the craft, they work their way across the water from right to left before cutting the engine and poling back, dragging the net along the bottom. Experience must have guided them that, with the boat's propeller disturbing the river mud, this would be a fruitful fishing spot.

Many years ago, fishing along the banks of the Ton Le Sap River at Phnom Penh was unimpeded by large boats. But today, six fishermen are competing for one meagre space of river territory where the tourist boats moor overnight. I hope my fisherman caught something today in that window of opportunity, before the next boat moves in and claims his part of the Ton Le Sap.