If you love elephants and would like to see them in a protected  nature reserve this is one of the places that I recommend the most!  I have been here twice, once when I was very young and the second when I was 18, went there with my family and my best friend and family from Italy. We enjoyed seeing the baby-eles getting fed, then had a chance to caress and take pics with the elephants.   When you enter the orphanage, there will be some elephants tied with chains, these are the older, blind or particularly temperamental ones. The rest of them are roaming free and are taken for a bath. One more thing to visit is the bookshop/craftshop near the bath place, you can buy some paper, books and souvenirs made from processed elephant dung, a project that won the Shell innovative awards few years ago... this is an environmentally friendly initiative, to show the use of alternative techniques to produce paper products.

I give Pinnawela only 3 stars because it is a bit sad seeing so many elephants together and knowing they've been mistreated or abandoned, injured, etc. It is great that the elephants have been given a place to live and enjoy life, but at times it is troubling to see elephants with 3 legs or trunks that don't work, or that have mental stress and need to be chained up. I'd rather support this place than anywhere that allows people to ride elephants for "fun" though. It is impressive to see so many of them in one place. If you want to see elephants though, I think it is better to support the national parks and see them in the wild.

dont worry if you miss it! it was sad to look at few elephants chained up...however soon came to realise that another 80 were roaming free around the park. Thats was worth to see!

If you go during the feeding time, you get to feed the baby elephants and watch the whole herd spray water on each other.

the elephant orphanage is fun for the children . they can feed the little elephants