Elephants and Temples

Elephants Everywhere

Having a bite to eat on the way to work

In Sri Lanka we are lucky enough to see elephants often. Driving down the road we may meet one on its way to work with its trainer or mahout. Elephants are still used in logging because they are not as hard on the jungle as heavy machinery.









You may wonder what elephants and temples have in common and the answer is Sri Lanka has a ton of temples and the elephant is sacred, so you find it at every temple, on the walls, in the paintings and statues and sometimes even live elephants stand inside the temple grounds waiting to greet you.

Hindu temple with Ganesh in multi-color

Hindu god

Hindu Temple

Buddhist Temple with seated Buddha

Standing Buddha

Jenise, Debby and Rick at ancient dagoba

My favorite temple-wall elephants

In our travels around Sri Lanka we have seen many Buddhist, Hindu and some Muslim temples. Some of the Buddhist and Hindu temples date back to 3 BC with huge dagobas and Buddha statues.

Monk statues going to the temple

Real monks going to the temple

Dagoba all decked out

There are still elephants in the wild but not many. They live in the National Parks, in the jungles and on the ocean, and our teacher friends took us on a safari to see them. Of course they were far away and we did not get close to disturb them, but it is good to know they still have wild elephants in Sri Lanka.

Bull elephant in Yala National Park

Sunrise in National Park

Our safari friends

A stork looking for breakfast

Lotus pond in Yala National Park

When Emily and Mary Ann visited, we went to the Elephant Orphanage where they care for wounded and orphaned elephants. There we could watch them bottle feed the baby elephants and take them to the river for a bath.

Mary Ann, Margaret and Emily hang'n with the elephants

More milk please

Oh that feels so good