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Published: March 20th 2012
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Seetha
This is the elephant that I'm looking after. She's the biggest girl here. Millennium Elephant Foundation, Horton Plains and Adam's Peak.
Hi everyone!
I decided to wait a week before posting my first proper entry since I left, just so I would have plenty of news to update you with, but now I have so much to tell you! I've had an amazing week here. I arrived in Colombo slightly early as my flight didn't touch down in Male as expected, so I had some time to kill in the airport before Amie was due to pick me up. Luckily I had my book with me ('Love in the Time of Cholera'😉 so that kept me occupied. At 4pm we left the airport, arriving at the foundation 2 hours later. I was introduced to the mahout that I'm working with, his name's Kapilla and he's very nice but always looks angry! The mahouts are all friendly, but most of them don't speak much english so we have to communicate by pointing and gesturing. I'm quite lucky, Kapilla is not the worst (in fact I think he understands more than he lets on!). All of the mahouts work with one specific elephant with whom they form a strong bond and tend to
Saliya
Feeding the elephants their vitamin balls is part of our daily routine. We normally treat them to some bananas and watermelon left from breakfast too. stay with for many years. There are 8 elephants at the foundation. 4 boys; Kavari Raja, Bandara, Saliya and Raja. And 4 girls; Pooja, Lakshmi, Rani and Seetha. Seetha is the elephant that I've been paired with for the 3 weeks that I'm here. She's really sweet and so curious! Pooja is the naughty one, she was born and raised at the foundation and lived in the house with the family here until she got too big. Rani and Lakshmi are both able to hold a paintbrush and their paintings are sold to help fund the charity. During the day the foundation functions as a tourist hotspot, receiving foreign visitors all day for elephant 'baths' and rides. It's an excellent people watching opportunity! Loads of cringey white people making fools of themselves, hehe.
There are 6 other volunteers here who live in a bungalow onsite. I'm staying with Amie in the main house, but the room has an external door so we can come and go as we please. I'm quite glad I'm not in the volunteer bungalow, as a couple of them are really lazy and annoying! Jonathan and Tamsin are really nice though, and on Friday a
new boy showed up, his name is Will and he's Norwegian. He's a bit of a character! We nicknamed him Norway, he doesn't seem to mind. During the day the foundation functions as a tourist hotspot, people visit and have an 'elephant bath' and a ride around the grounds. The money they make goes towards improving the conditions for the elephants. At the moment they have to be chained when their mahouts aren't with them, which is unfortunate but in the afternoons the volunteers help with the 'enrichment' program created to try and make their lives a bit happier by giving them some time to roam around together.
My daily routine.
6:45am Wake up.
7:00am Meet Kapilla, clean Seetha's bed, deliver dung to the paper factory next door for recycling.
7:45am Wash Seetha in the river.
8:45am Breakfast.
9:30am 'Vet check' - elephants are given vitamins and their feet are checked for rot.
10:00am Gardening.
12 noon Lunch.
2:00pm Campaigning and fundraising activities.
3:00pm 'Project' work - each individual has a different task during their stay. During this time I either visit the local after-school club and teach English, or help Amie write the newsletter.
4:00pm Enrichment
- the elephants are all taken to the paddock where we hide fruit for them to find. They get the chance to interact with each other and explore their surroundings.
5:00pm Elephants are put to bed.
7:00pm Dinner.
Weekends away.
All of the volunteers get weekends 'off'. I put the off in inverted commas as it's not accurate to say we have weekends off at all! We squeezed so much into last weekend... two sunrise hikes on only 4 hours sleep! The weekdays feel much more chilled out than the weekends for us. Last weekend 5 of us (Amie, Jonathan, Tamsin, Norway and I) planned to walk Horton Plains, visit a tea plantation and then walk Adam's Peak. Due to the mountainous nature of the country and the hazardous state of the roads here it takes 10 times longer to get anywhere than you'd expect, and as budget travellers the bus is our main mode of transportation. The buses here are pretty horrendous, truth be told, but for 25p a go you can't really complain! We left at 2pm on Friday afternoon and headed for Nuwara Eliya, which involved catching a train to Hatton and then jumping
in a cab from there. Nuwara Eliya is pretty, but Hatton is a dump... avoid it at all costs! Unfortunately it seems that there's a major bus station there so we have already had the pleasure of visiting Hatton on a number of occasions. The cab we jumped into in Hatton was a van that we barely squeezed in to, which was full of bananas! Our guest house at Nuwara Eliya was very comfortable, but because we arrived there so late (around 10:30pm), we did not have much time to sleep before we had to wake up and get to Horton Plains to see the sunrise. After about 4 hours sleep we headed off in a cab to the park, and the views did not disappoint. The walk itself was fairly low impact and by 10am we had completed the circuit around World's End and Baker's Fall. We then headed back to Nuwara Eliya to find some lunch at the Grand Hotel... which was very grand indeed and we felt extremely scruffy! After lunch we got back on the bus to Hatton and then transferred to Delhousie in order to climb Adam's Peak. Adam's Peak (Sri Pada in Sinhalese) is
a Buddhist pilgrimage to a temple in which the footprint of Buddha is said to be preserved. The peak also has relevance to the Christian, Muslim and Hindu faiths. Anyway, by the time we reached Delhousie it was 9pm, and we had planned to begin our trek to the summit at midnight in order to reach the summit in time for sunrise. Amie and Jon managed to grab a few hours sleep in Delhousie, however I didn't even attempt it, as I knew that if I did fall asleep I was unlikely to want to wake up and do the walk! So at midnight we began our mission to the top. Adam's Peak is an unusual mountain walk, as it consists of LOTS of stairs! My legs are still killing me today and it has been days since I completed it. I can officially say that I am a Budhist pilgrim. I can also officially declare that Adam's Peak is an abomination! Shouldn't be allowed! I have included loads of photos on this blog, so please scroll down and check them all, I believe there's two pages worth down there.
Next weekend.
Next weekend the same group
of us are planning to visit the beach next weekend, God only knows how long it'll take us to get there though! Will post photos next week to let you know how it goes!
Right, I really must go to sleep... I can hardly keep my eyes open!
I hope you're all well and not missing me too much, harhar!
Goodnight!
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Sally Kirk
non-member comment
First Week
Hi Laura, Sooooooooo enjoyed your first travel blog.....felt as though I was almost there myself. My very first experience of a 'real' elephant(when I was about 7 years old) was in Bristol Zoo, near where I was born, and her name was Rosie. She has stayed in my memory all these years! Look forward to the next instalment.