"Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage" a Pinnawala Travel Page by mightywease

There is something endlessly fascinating about elephants. Maybe it’s their sense of community, the way they react with each other, the protection the females give their young or maybe it’s just that they are such magnificent creatures.
At the Pinnawella Elephant Orphanage you can get to see elephants in a controlled environment. The orphanage is a government run organisation which saves orphaned, abandoned and injured elephants. The elephants roam in free in their large – but protected - area and at certain times visitors can see some of the elephants being fed and bathed. Seeing the baby elephants being fed was a wonderful experience. Firstly they are just so lovely, with their sad looking eyes and tufts of bristly hair on their heads. The elephants are given six bottles of milk (but we are taking whisky size bottles, not pints) 2 or 3 times a day. They noise they make when waiting to be fed is amazing, a sort of low rumbling growl rather like the sound of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park!
For a while we were able to watch some of the herd in the near distance, a stray dog was trying his luck running up and baiting them but they immediately encircled the youngsters, charging out occasionally when the dog got too close. We then watched the heard take to the river to bathe, the younger elephants pushing each other in their hurry to get there, you could sense their relaxation. The little ones played, the older ones lolled and one elephant shuffled his bottom against a rock to give it a good scratch. Wonderful!