Day 7 Thursday

Today.our guide, Su, told us we would be travelling down from the central highlands to the east coastal plain. He said that the climate would change from hot to bloody hot. He has a brilliant command of English an a sense of humour to go with it. We drove along steep winding roads like those in the Alps but I must say that the drivers are all very courteous, backing up as necessary. Full marks to our driver, Prianta, who  managed to get within an inch or so of the edge of the road next to a sheer drop although some of our party had to get off the coach and change their pants


We passed a Hindu Temple at the side of the road.

It was said to be the place where the king of Sri Lanka brought an Indian princess he had kidnapped, Sita, and kept her for 7 years. The monkey god brought her a message from her husband who then came and rescued her. The monkey god statue has a nice string of lemons round his neck, which is odd as lemons and oranges don’t grow in Sri Lanka but do in India

The villages we passed through all had a Hindu feeling about them - the womens’ saris were different, there were lots of little Hindu temples and cows roamed freelyin thestreets

Eventually we arrived in Udevaliva at a baby elephant transit camp. It’s not an orphanage although there are orphanages do exist but the elephants get used to mixing with humans and can’t be released into the wild. Here the baby elephants which are orphans mix freely with wild jungle elephants. There are 6000 wild elephants in Sri Lanka and 450 domesticated ones. They can live for 70 to 80 years. They live in a matriarchal herd, that is the females and the babies. The babies are fed by their mothers till they are 7 years old. When they reach maturity at 14 years, the young males leave the herd and live solitarily until it is mating time when they briefly return to the herd.  Only 7% of males grow tusks, they are called tuskers, and none of the females. So the Ivory is very rare and precious. Punishment for killing an elephant is rightly very harsh. Elephants have 6 sets of grinding teeth over their lifetime which fall out and are replaced as they wear down. Towards the end of their life, their last set of teeth become worn and they have to seek easier food to chew so they often migrate to marshy ground. Eventually they die of old age and so a lot of elephant bones are found in these areas. It has long been a misconception that they come to these so called elephant graveyardsto die. They don’t, they’re just looking for softer food.  There are usually 10 to 15 elephants in a herd but in times of drought they join up with others to form a larger herd to drink from reservoirs, where of course there is more competition.
Anyway the transit camp. The babies are fed 4 times a day on formula milk which is poured down a funnel and tube straight into their mouth

As soon as it’s over they trot off to where we were waiting and chew some grass laid out for them.

Except a couple of cheeky ones who tried to sneak up for seconds. The keeper stood at the river and let them come up to the feeding station 2 by 2 as aelephants should do according to nursery rhymes.  Their ages ranged from 2 weeks (ahhhh) to 7 I think.

There are over 40 young elephants currently at the centre

Only 2 weeks old!

A couple of them were tuskers.  There was also an older one who had had her leg amputated after treading on a mine.  They had fitted her with a prosthetic leg and she seemed quite happy but she could of course never be released. She would probably only live for 25 to 30 years as her leg would not be able to support her adult weight for much longer

You can see the prosthetic on the back left leg

And so on to Yala where tomorrow we will be up at the crack of dawn for a 5.30am start to our safari. This time we are hoping to see elephants in the wild.