Travel Tips

Enroute to Anuradhapura, we had a stop at the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage. This was started by the Department of Wildlife Conservation in order to care for and feed orphaned elephants found in the jungle. The elephants are daily taken to the river for bathing, baby elephants are bottle fed.  Feeding time is 8:00 a.m. At 10:00 a.m. the elephants are walked to the river for bathing. Do ensure to look up/confirm the timings when you plan your visit here.  We missed the feeding time, though we were able to see the elephants being bathed in the river. To see the elephants interacting with each other, bathing, playing is a joy. Discounts on entry fee can be obtained on producing Indian passport. Credit cards not accepted. More photos below

First stop on our tour of Sri Lanka was Colombo. We took the Jet Airways flight 9W256 from Mumbai to Colombo. This is a direct flight and reaches Colombo at 4:45 in the morning. This enables you to have the entire day to yourself for site seeing. If you want to take the tour at a easy pace, then I guess this option is not the ideal one. We were put up at the Global Towers. Have put a detailed review of the hotel here . After a brief interval to freshen up in the hotel, we began our local site-seeing tour. Local site seeing covered the popular Pettah Market, the famous Muslim Mosque down 2nd Cross street, old colonial buildings in Fort, old Parliament of Sri Lanka, the popular Galle Face, Town Hall and the Independence Square where Sri Lanka gained independence from the British in 1948. All except the Independence Square were 'done' sitting in the bus. One option that we had selected as part of local site seeing was a trip to Kelaniya Rajamaha Viharaya. It is believed th...