Elephants and Minneriya National Park

This weekend was great! I’m going to post about it in two separate posts so that I can get more pictures in about it and since I probably won’t have too much excitement during the week.

First I started my journey at 6:00 am with a private car with driver and tour guide to head towards Minneriya, a National Park with wild elephants, and also buffalo, deer and birds. On the way there, the driver (who was also a certified Sri Lankan tour guide, so was full of information about the country) asked if I wanted to do an elephant ride before we went to the park. Who could say no to that? We stopped and I climbed up the platform to get into the basket/seating area on the back of the elephant and handed my camera to another person to take photos. He asked if I wanted to sit on the neck and I, thinking it was just for a picture, said sure and moved up. Silly me, he takes the picture and next thing I know we’re moving again! It’s nothing like riding a horse, with a saddle and reins and stirrups. Basically there was part of the burlap from the seating frame, and elephant. It was quite terrifying at first.

However, after I got used to it, it wasn’t so bad. There was another person selling bunches of small bananas you could feed to the elephant from where I was sitting. He would lift up his trunk and I just dropped it in! Definitely worth the stop.

After lunch and a brief rest at the hotel, I got to go on a jeep safari at Minneriya. Once again, had the whole thing to myself with a driver for the jeep and a guide from the government. He was a bit lively, but at least kept me from hitting my head on any trees! And then we got to where all the elephants were! Dozens of them slowly milling about eating and trying to keep cool in the afternoon heat. It’s dangerous to get too close, being wild animals and all, but it was still awesome.

There were several babies and one that the guide said was probably only a month old. These were Asian elephants are pregnant for about 22 months, babies for about 5 years and after about 15 years are adults, which is when the males leave the herd. Only the males have tusks on Asian elephants.

After that it was back to the hotel for some dinner, cricket (I think I mentioned a big tournament going on in Sri Lanka right now, and the Sri Lankan team was playing), and finally sleep. I don’t remember the name of what I ate below, but the pockets were delicious and the chips are a Sri Lankan version of potato chips, freshly baked/fried and coated with a sort of chili powder. It was absolutely delicious.