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And now, back to our regularly-scheduled ELEPHANTS! Here we have the elephants of the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage. The Orphanage was established in 1975 with five orphaned baby elephants. Now the population exceeds 65 elephants, some of which were born at Pinnawela. Every day, you can watch some of the babies being bottle-fed, then it's off to the nearby river for everyone for one of their refreshing daily baths.

MORE KANDY PHOTOS ON [PAGE 1] [PAGE 2] [PAGE 3] [PAGE 4] [PAGE 5] [PAGE 7] [THE TRAIN RIDE FROM ELLA]

A tusker and friend enjoying a meal.

Muddy, muddy elephants!

This poor boy (the elephant, not the unknown tourist) lost part of his front right leg to a landmine. He walks with a humpy sort of gait, but otherwise seems to do just fine, bless him.

Big and small (and muddy!)
Time to bottle-feed the young'uns. It's possible that baby elephants are the cutest things on earth, EVEN CUTER THAN OUR CATS! Can you imagine?

As you can see, some of the "babies" being fed are quite large, but elephants aren't weaned until they are two years old.

Somebody was very hungry, and very loud when letting us know that fact. You'd be amazed at the noise that can come out of a wee elephant like this. This poor darling lost his left ear to a predator.

Here he is from the other side, ear intact. Indian elephants weigh about 200 lbs. at birth.

Mmmm... lunch! And back at the mud bath, elephants are coming and going.
Thundering down the road to the river for their afternoon baths. Elephants aren't really brown. They just love to cover themselves in muck. They use their trunks to throw it up onto their backs, ensuring every ele-inch is entirely filthy.

Getting muddy is fun, but so is bath-time.

And the crowd looks on. We were eating lunch at a restaurant overlooking the river. Smashing devilled chicken!
The elephants know about the mud on the far side of the river, and some of them decided to head towards it. And then the skies opened up!
See, I told you they aren't really brown. And now that we're clean, let's get dirty again!
Mother and child. Okay, they didn't get dirty again THAT fast. This is another shot of the herd entering the river.
I'm going to wash that dirt right out of my... hide. We looooooove the elephants. Have I mentioned lately that we loooove the elephants?
MORE KANDY PHOTOS ON [PAGE 1] [PAGE 2] [PAGE 3] [PAGE 4] [PAGE 5] [PAGE 7] [THE TRAIN RIDE FROM ELLA]
All photos and text copyright Natalie Rowe 2008 - Stealing brings bad karma. Don't make me set my lawyer-husband upon you!