Sri Lanka Diaries: Part Five
Pinnewala
The green bus that I took from Kegalle, creaked and jolted its way through some Sri Lankan greenery for about 20 minutes before depositing me opposite the gates of the elephant orphanage at Pinnewala. I wanted to satisfy the rumbling in my stomach before subjecting it to the turmoil that can only be felt in the presence of sixty elephants standing a stampede-length from you. I looked around and spotted a restaurant nearby. “Maybe I’ll get a sandwich here,” I said to myself. Alas, the restaurant only served curry and rice and for a reason unknown to me, I wasn’t very keen on trying Sri Lankan cuisine. The stomach would have to survive the wait.
At the ticket counter I was pleasantly surprised at not having to pay the SLR 1000 that the white tourists before me had to. I, my curious friends, had to pay the SAARC rate which was only SLR 250. I could foresee myself digging into a royal feast later that afternoon. Once inside the main compound of the orphanage, things got a bit disappointing.
For starters, there were no signs to point me in the right direction. I managed to figure out where to go based on the movement of other human beings and walked towards the bottle-feeding stall. Pay SLR 250 to hold and stick a 750 ml bottle of milk into the mouth of a hungry elephant calf while your better half (if you don’t travel alone like I do) captures it on camera and it might just score you some karma points. “Hmm…where’s the rifle-shooting booth,” I muttered to myself, “maybe I could win a fur elephant at this fair of an orphanage”. Even for prodding the elephants into desirable camera-friendly poses with their pointed hook sticks, the handlers (I don’t like the word mahout, so I’ll call them that) demanded Sri Lankan Rupees in multiples of hundreds. Going to a circus would have been more economically viable and entertaining! To say that I was not pleased with this commercialisation of humble daily activities would be an understatement.
I wasn’t bristling with indignation for too long though. Not with the kind of photo-ops these gentle beasts presented, even if in captivity. I would really have enjoyed spending a few weeks observing and interacting with these animals at close range. Maybe I’d even have made friends with a few. After watching an American woman (she sounded American, though I can never tell the difference between a Canadian accent and an American one) feed a calf while her male counterpart photographed all involved – calf, calf handler and the woman – I followed a British posse to a large open space where the remaining elephants hung out. It was a beautiful location with idyllic hills providing the perfect backdrop for a Bollywood dance sequence. Who knows, elephants might make better backup dancers than humans do!
The atmosphere was a festive one, with the smaller and (presumably) younger elephants gorging on a buffet of tree branch fibre and fallen green leaves while the bigger ones stood around in groups probably discussing the lack of juicy sugarcane that their more well off cousins in India enjoyed.
Almost isolated at one side of this barbeque-like gathering, was the jumbo – the player of the pack – showing off some deft moves with his trunk, with a little help from his handler of course. I swear I could have heard elephantine giggles coming from amongst the hungry lot.
Within a few minutes of witnessing these 60-odd elephants together in one place at the same time, it was time to get them ready for their second of two daily treks to the river nearby. We were politely asked to get the hell out of the way and wait on the other side of the motorway outside the main gates. Traffic was stopped in both directions, creating a safe passageway for the elephants to pass through, though I doubt if the cars would have been able to cause any damage to them in the first place.
Watching these majestic animals trundle down to the river was like watching school kids being made to walk in line to the sports field. They were evidently looking forward to the experience, so coaxing became unnecessary. They would have very happily walked over a human or two if they had to, blissfully unaware of the concept of hospital bills and boring ceilings.
At the river, the elephants that really liked water lay on the riverbed sideways and made themselves very comfortable. They didn’t need a “DO NOT DISTURB” sign hanging around their necks to let you know that nothing was going to come between them and their ‘spa time’. I watched them from a distance wondering if I would ever find a hideout where I could forget everything else and just savour the moment. The presence of even one human being as far as the eye could see would spoil it for me. I’ll have to start saving up for my own private island then, I guess.
It took a sudden storm and a heavy downpour to bring the elephants’ ‘spa time’ to an unscheduled close – about an hour before it was due. In the 10 years that I have been living in India, I have never seen the kind of thunder and lightning accompanied rain that I witnessed that afternoon at Pinnewala, by the river. It was a crazy, mad, angry storm and it took away the joy I had of saving money on the entrance fee to the orphanage. By the time the rains descended from their heavenly abode, I was sitting on the rocky riverbank, beside the restaurant of a nice hotel.
Nice hotels make a killing in such situations when hungry amateur writer-photographers have nowhere else to go while waiting for storms to cease. So I ordered my royal feast there that consisted of one cheese and tomato sandwich, a tube of Pringles potato crisps (I’m more British than American and we don’t call them chips), a can of stale orange juice and a bottle of ‘mineral’ water. Potato crisps tend to taste so much better in rainy weather. Have you noticed that?
I didn’t have to wait long after finishing my princely meal to get back on the road, as the rain had stopped just as suddenly as it had started. While waiting for the bus, an irritating taxi driver tried persuading me to take the train from Rambukkana to Kandy instead. In spite of making it clear that I’d rather take a bus, he kept pestering me and furnishing unsolicited information about train timetables and conveniences. He couldn’t be getting a commission at the train station, could he?
Fortunately for me, the bus I was waiting for, arrived before there was any bloodshed. I noticed a white couple boarding the bus too and made a mental note of keeping track of where they would get off, so I could follow them. At the junction, the three of us got off and since they seemed to be looking for the same bus stop as I was, I asked them if they were headed towards Kandy too. They were and so we became a team and in the slight drizzle that followed, we managed to find ourselves onboard one of the air-conditioned minibuses I mentioned about earlier in the text. When you’ve just been drenched, even if ever so slightly, an air-conditioned environment is not a good one to find yourself in. It literally puts you in a “shiver me timbers” state, as Popeye would have articulated.
Nevertheless, we made ourselves comfortable and occupied foldable seats that kept the aisle space from being wasted. In the conversation that ensued, I learnt that these people were from Ireland and would be spending a few weeks travelling in Sri Lanka. The woman actually asked me if I was from Kandy and I didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. So, I remained neutral.
I love the reaction I usually get from people when I tell them that I’m from Kenya though currently living in India. Especially white people because they seem more interested in hearing about Africa and knowing about the Indian connection to it. I had a very interesting conversation with the couple, all the way to Lake Bungalow where I was staying, before parting ways. I don’t remember the gentleman’s name now, but he didn’t even let me pay for the taxi that we shared after already having paid my bus fare to Kandy (the conductor thought we were together and charged him for 3 seats instead of 2, which I realised only later when the conductor didn’t ask me for my fare).