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Our Indian Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur landed in Chennai, a city of 5 million people in southern India, formerly known as Madras. The plane was still slowing down as nearly every Indian in the plane stood up, opened up their overhead compartments, took out their oversized hand luggage and then just stood there, crammed in the aisle, while the plane was taxiing to the gate! Patience must not be their strong point.

The Trouble in Paradise

Odv
2006-04-15 18:40:16

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impressive site in Sri Lanka. Sigiriya however is visited in under 2 hours, the giant lion feet and cave paintings are interesting as is the view from the top, however the entire site is not more than ruins of which only the foundations are still visible.

Compared to say Bagan, 10 USD once (you could spend a week there), or Angkor, 20 USD for one day (which is not enough), 20 USD for something that is visited in under 2 hours seems rather steep! Since Sigiriya was supposedly the best the country had we decided not to waste any more money on overpriced sites in Sri Lanka.

We hoped to see a nicer side of Sri Lanka at the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage, but the usual discriminatory pricing occurred again (though less extreme). In the orphanage, guides encourage you to take a photo with an elephant and to touch one. Of course once this is done, they waste no time to ask for money (and we were already overcharged to enter the place)!

I had hoped to see people who cared about elephants, but instead saw only people interested in extracting as much money as possible from foreigners using the elephants as a tool. The elephants were beaten with sticks and chased. At the river, where the elephants were taking a bath, they were horded together by the mahouts. One elephant's chain got stuck between the rocks, the poor thing pulled at the chain with his trunk and was visibly scared as an angry mahout ran towards him! Once the chain was loose the elephant ran as fast as it could. We are told the mahouts really love the elephants. Well I couldn't see that, but it was very clear that the mahouts love money.

We were rather disappointed in Sri Lanka from what we had experienced until now. The people seemed shallow, their pretend friendliness was invariably just a means to extract money from us. It seemed like Sri Lanka was a great place to find out what it feels like to be a walking bag of money.

Of course, it is ...