One Hour In Elephant Kingdom Part-2

What About Seeing Some Little Baby Elephants?

In this entire idea of visiting Elephant sanctuary, the thing that attracted me most was to see a baby elephant! Considering the magnificence of a full grown elephant I always wondered what would be the size of a baby elephant and  how it would be exactly! 

Baby elephants

Well, I did not have to wait very long to quench my thirst of curious mind. 
It was not a cage but still it was surrounded with high metal grills where those baby elephants were kept and taken care of. When I was down there, I saw a pack of little elephants jumping and running behind the caretakers. Well, by uttering "little" I do not actually mean it literally because even the baby elephants are bigger than a full grown up dog and healthier, not to mention! Though they were actually behaving and screeching like a bunch of hyper active children. "so that is why they keep them in chains" I told myself, though could not make myself convinced fully. After all they are babies, and it was not a zoo, rather than it was a sanctuary and those baby elephants should get full freedom to grow up as they get in the nature. 
Meanwhile, I saw a caretaker coming with a big feeder having milk in it. Slowly he approached to the baby elephant that was making noise and began to feed it. It was absolutely happy after getting its stomach full and fat but did not stop whirling. I guessed, for this time it was doing so because it was simply happy!! 

The caretaker is feeding the baby elephant

I heard somewhere that this Pinnawala Elephant Sanctuary is mostly notable for having the largest herd of captive elephants in the world and now it has elephants from three generations. I assumed those babies would be the next representative generations for sure!

Be Aware When The Elephant Herd Moves Together!

Our allotted time was about to over and though we had a primary plan to watch elephants bathing but due to the shortage of time, we could not manage it. On the way back we saw the elephants are taken for bath to the adjacent Maha Oya River. We sided from the main road because when the herd moves together it was very dangerous for any human near to it. The moving herd possessed threat of injury for human, even sometimes of death.

The Elephant Herd

Visit To A Local Traditional Shop

We visited a local shop adjacent to the Sanctuary where they sold wooden souvenirs, Sri Lanka's traditional mask, sculpture, statues, accessories. Due to excessive price  and lack of time no one of us was able to but anything and we consoled each other that we would be having plenty of chances later for buying things within reasonable price and slowly moved towards our vans.

Wooden curved elephant statue

Wooden wall-mat curved elephants on it

Aya (from Egypt) got a liking towards the Buddha Statue

Sri Lankan Famous traditional mask

I rather liked to sit on a lion! (never mind it was wooden)

On the way back to MIMT, I was wide awake, but this time Shaheeda was sleeping. More or less we were talking about our Community visits and we already knew that six of us from Chalet 36 were never going to get in a same group and we preferred different communities as well. Parting from each other was quite upsetting though the feeling came like a flake of snow. It fall upon my heart and took a moment to feel that cold sadness and after a moment it evaporated.

Our mind was engaged in others things too. 

Today we were expecting two guest speakers among us and their identities were still not revealed. We came back to MIMT with a new excitement for the new session. It was already 11 o' clock and we had still loads to do before leaving for our community visits on this afternoon.

(To be continued)