Find Travel Guru in Sri Lanka
If the combination amazes you, be prepared for many surprises a one tiny little tropical isle nicknamed the pearl of the Indian Ocean. Surrounded by the sea, Sri Lanka’s glorious beaches are found around its coast and reaching a height of around 2,500 ft above sea level as you go inland. You don’t need to travel much to find forests, jungles and high mountains. Apart from its beaches, Sri Lanka boasts amazing wild life and an adorable elephant orphanage to watch unsteady baby elephants being carefully nurtured until their gain their 10’ to 13’ height and approximately 7,000 lb of weight!
The Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka is a “must see” for any visitor. Baby elephants have often wandered off the herd and found themselves lost in ravines and pits whilst in search of water and sometimes appear to have been abandoned by their mothers. The job of nurturing them is not an easy task. Elephants consume about 75 kg of green matter and about 2 kg of a rice/maize/bran mix per day. Babies are milk fed thrice a day, at 9 am, 1 pm and 5 pm and guzzle down a bottle in seconds! Herds troop down to the Maha oya twice a day, 10 am and 2 pm for their much needed soak in water up to the ears, squirting each other and their mahouts whilst getting a scrub down. If you were around the crowded shop alleyway when they pass by, be sure to stick backwards as they silently pound past you. It’s an exhilariating experience. They are captive, tame and people friendly though. The elephant orphanage is set on 25 acres of rural coconut land. This is a great opportunity to touch them, feel their leathery skin and see them up close as you would ever get. The next option would be joining a wild life safari in Sri Lanka.
The difference between the elephant orphanage and the wild life safari in Sri Lanka is huge! These animals are better viewed from the safe distance of a custom built jeep manned by trained naturalist who would narrate as you travel. Great opportunities to capture the exotic sights, smells and sounds of the jungle which cannot be fully justified on video. Visitors could pick one of Sri Lanka’s two wild life national parks at Yala or Wilpattu. Yala provides opportunities to spot leopards. Wilpattu might yield the hard to spot sloth bear if lucky but both parks boast plenty of wild boar, deer, monkeys and water buffaloes covered in mud and blending into their waterholes. The parks contain a diverse array of flora and fauna indigenous to Sri Lanka. Birds alone number in over 400 recorded species, some of them endemic to the country. The landscape has its own natural beauty with dry open plains, lakes, rivers holding saltwater crocodiles and even sea turtles as part of Wilpattu borders the coastline. There is no shortage of sightings of lizards, snakes, insects of various colours and frogs. There are tracts of water where the sounds of millions of frogs form their own strange, indescribable cacophony of sound. An awesome experience!
Beaches worth visiting in sri lanka are too numerous to mention as the island is surrounded by the sea, but some spots have earned their stars. The coastline is never smooth. It dips into bays, coves and little inlets. On the eastern coast is Sri Lanka’s famed Trincomalee beach, with its particularly azure blue seas, its, fishing, diving, whale watching and sea angling and coral reef. It is here that the famed hot wells of Sri Lanka are found, a supposed cure for many ailments but definitely one that leaves you totally refreshed at almost no cost. The Nilaveli beach is not too far away from where visitors could take a boat ride to Pigeon Island. Further below, still on the East Coast is Batticaloa, with wide, sandy beaches fringed with palm trees, its flat land, plenty of inland water bodies where the singing fish could be heart at night in many lagoons. Kalkudah and Passikuda are equally famous for their great bays and beaches of Sri Lanka where you could tread into quite a distance of clear sea waters.
In the Southern coast of Sri Lanka, the beaches at Tangalle even have a spot where the waves overlap from different directions due to the lay of the coastline. Hikkaduwa was a tourist paradise from the 70’s and still is, to be joined by many other beachside towns now studded with some of the best hotels in the world. TOURTIPPER provides guides who bring each experience to life for lasting memories both on camera, video and indelible memories long after the tan is gone.