Pinnawala

Pinnawela is a beautiful village on the banks of a river near Kegalle, a town that is between Colombo the commercial capital and Kandy the cultural capital.

 

The pictorial village the world’s only elephant orphanage that cares for the largest elephant herd in captivity. It shelters many baby elephants, as well as a blind elephant and one crippled.  

 

Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage is established by the Sri Lankan Department of Wildlife Conservation in 1975, which is built on a 25 acre coconut plantation. At the Orphanage they feed, nurse and house young elephants found abandoned by their mothers. The herd visits the river twice a day, the sight of the herd frolicking in the river deemed as a ‘must see’ for visitors.  One of the heart-warming sights at the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage is to watch baby elephants being bottle-fed and well nurtured by their mahouts and caretakers. The elephants are also fed large quantities of jackfruit, coconut, kitul (sugar palm), tamarind and grass.

 

The Sri Lankan species Elephas Maximus is the largest of the Asiatic elephant genus, and has patches with no skin color on its ears, face, trunk and belly. They are the darkest of all Asiatic elephants. Seeing this large herd of these behemoths is a great experience you can have on a Sri Lanka trip.