Elephant Transit Home

Becky follows in her brother's footsteps and visits the Elephant Transit Home.........

Before we got to the elephants, we first had to travel for hours on the coach but, luckily for us, Ruwantha knew a delicious cake shop along the way so we stopped there. Mrs Clarke was kind enough to buy us all something to eat. I personally had a delicious piece of triangular chocolate cake and after being "deprived" of it, it was a very welcome treat.

Whilst we were on the road, we were passing through a town but got very stuck in a lot of traffic. We found out that this was due to a singer who had just won the Dream Star Competition, basically this is the Sri Lankan equivalent of X Factor, and lived around the area.

There were loads of people and cars were all jammed but we did manage to escape pretty fast. Whilst we had got past the actual stage, we still needed to get through the rest of the crowds as some motorbikes were pulling stunts on the bustling road.

We soon reached our lunch stop which was the Silver Ray Restaurant. We had a delicious Sri Lankan buffet with all sorts of curry and rice to choose from which I think we all found out had a bit of spice to it. I had freshly made pineapple juice which I have to say, I enjoyed it a lot and it killed the heat of the curries. There was then a range of puddings - most people chose the warm chocolate cake. It was very rich and I felt a little sick after eating too much of it on top of the cake we had eaten earlier.

To our delight, our resident, now Grade 7, pianist surprised us by asking the pianist at the restaurant to have a go on the beautiful white piano. Natacha played the restaurant a few pieces from the top of her head. It was great to see one of our own trying out a bit more work experience. I'm sure her parents would be incredibly proud of her as well as everyone else who knows her.

After the delicious lunch we drove onto the Elephant Transit Home and had to dash to the fence to catch the feeding. It was quite busy there as a bus full of Sri Lankan tourists were also there.
Elephants are my personal favourite animal so to me it was one of the best experiences of my life. As you can see in the picture of me at the beginning of the blog, I am actually wearing an elephant necklace!

The size of the baby elephants ranged from tiny to quite large. They were allowed in in groups of 2 or 3 to get the milk. Some were more excited so ran over to the feeders but others took their time and plodded over.
This elephant below sadly had a deformed back leg but was still very happy. One of the best parts about baby elephants is the fuzz they have on their head and back. They are also very tiny compared to the adults who are enormous.

After their dose of milk, they had a good munch on some leaves and grass left out for them. I felt a bit sorry for the last ones as they didn't get as much food as the first ones did.

Here is a close up of one of the elephants enjoying a funnel of milk. Some elephants were even cheeky enough to steal the funnel only to find out that there wasn't any milk in it so they soon chucked it back the the feeders.

It was sad watching the elephants go as I really wanted to steal one and bring it home but in this picture you can see the size difference between each of the elephants.

We reached our hotel and then we headed out again to visit the local Buddhist temple.
Here is the bodhi tree that you walk round 3 times and you devote water for the tree or flowers to Buddha.

Inside the stupa there were beautiful paintings telling the story of Buddha painted by a local artist. They were very delicate and well detailed. In this painting Buddha is becoming enlightened.

In the very middle of the stupa there was a statue of Buddha and as you can see, it is very colourful and vibrant.

There were also beautiful paintings on the ceiling called the life and times of the Buddha. It must have taken the painter ages to fill it with the beautiful colours.

Ella and Yasmin enjoying the paintings and statue.

Here is one of the daughter of one of our more seen commenters. Georgia is looking a little confused here but seemed to enjoy the temple.

Overall we all thoroughly enjoyed the day and I personally enjoyed the elephants the most. We hope to see plenty more elephants on the safari the next day as well as lots of other animals.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the teachers and everyone who has helped organise the trip and I look forward to what is to come.
I would also like to say to my family that I miss them a lot and am excited to see them on Sunday evening. To Nero, I miss our hugs and to the humans I also miss the hugs(but mainly Nero's). Lots of love, Becky xx

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