Sri Lanka #10

During thee festival period the city of kandy is a real hive of activity, and hotel rooms go up four of five time in price. we booked about 6 months ago and paid double the standard price.


kandy has a few other sights to see, but the other main sight we were interested to see was the elephant orphanage that is situated some distance away and once again we use the service of a tuk tuk to get there.
The same tuk tuk driver had a price and a pick up time to visit the orphanage.

He picked us up right on time and away we went, the tuk tuk struggled over a mountain range to which he ensured us it was no problem with his machine.

Well over a hour of travel he pulled off the road at a stall and purchased a bunch of bananas to feed the elephants, we offered the money for the bananas ,but he said he would pay.

We travelled on further and arrived at the orphanage, he hurried us in to purchase our tickets A$16 each then escorted us through one part of the orphanage, before we headed out again, across the main road then into a side road that lead down to the river. This side road was full of tourist type stalls and stores.
We had walked most of the way down to the river when we heard bells and sirens going off to look up and see a great herd of elephants, coming down the road that we had just walked down.
Our driver got us in a good position to take photos  and a total of fifty three elephants came charging down the road past us and on and down to the river.

We were then allowed to go to the rivers edge to view the elephants having the time of their lives in the water and on the rocks. We also had our photos taken with them (at a cost of cause)

This visit was well worth the money just to see so many elephants so close and together was a real thrill.

As we were travelling back  from the elephants the driver stopped for us to view a woman who had two porcupines on leads  as if they were dogs. once she spotted me with a camera, her hand came out requesting money.

The Bananas that were purchased were for the next stop where one can wash and ride the elephants (for yet another fee), but, Teresa decide we were not going elephant trekking, which left us with a load of bananas, when we got back to the hotel the driver insisted we keep the bananas, Teresa ate  the bananas during the remainder of our time in Sri Lanka.