Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage Day Tour from Kandy

Overview

Eight hours out of Kandy to see one of the largest captive herds of Asian elephants anywhere. It is a straightforward day and a genuinely impressive sight. It also attracts sustained criticism, and since you are choosing whether to spend a day here, the honest thing is to set out both what happens and what the argument is about.

What the day covers

Transport, entry and guiding are set per booking on this tour rather than fixed for the product. Where one of them is not part of yours, it is arranged ahead of the day rather than at the gate.

Why there are orphans at all

Sri Lanka holds several thousand wild elephants in a densely farmed country, and the collision between the two is the worst anywhere in the world: several hundred elephants and well over a hundred people die each year in conflicts over crops and land. Calves are separated from herds, fall into wells and irrigation channels, or are injured by farmers protecting fields. Pinnawala was established in the 1970s to take in a handful of those animals. It now houses many times that number, most of them born on site.

What the day looks like

The fixed points are the bathing sessions, generally mid-morning and mid-afternoon, when the herd is walked down through the village to the river. That short street procession is the best part of the visit and is watched from the roadside. At the river the animals stay in the water for around two hours while visitors watch from terraces above. Bottle-feeding of young animals happens at set times and is charged separately where offered.

Where the criticism lands

Three things draw it. Adult animals are chained at various points during the day; mahouts carry a hooked implement used to direct elephants by pressure; and the site has become a breeding operation rather than a route back to the wild, with almost no animals released. Supporters point to the survival of orphans that would otherwise have died and to decades of veterinary care. Critics argue that a facility producing captive-born calves is no longer doing the job its name describes. Both positions are held sincerely, and you can watch and judge for yourself.

If that matters to you, there is another model

Elsewhere in the country, at Udawalawe, a transit home takes in orphaned calves, keeps human contact deliberately minimal, feeds them behind barriers and returns them to the national park when they are old enough. Visitors watch feeding from a distance and cannot touch anything. Several hundred animals have gone back to the wild from it. It is further from Kandy and offers far less contact, which is precisely the point of it.

Almost none of the males have tusks

Look closely and you will notice how few tusked animals there are. In Asian elephants only males grow tusks at all, and in Sri Lanka the proportion that do is around one in ten, the lowest anywhere in the species' range. The usual explanation is centuries of selective removal — tusked males were captured, traded and killed — leaving a population descended largely from those without.

Practicalities

Go for the morning session if you can, before the heat and the crowds. Wear closed shoes, keep bags shut, and expect the riverside terraces to be busy. Note that cancellation here requires three days' notice rather than the usual one.