2 Weeks Volunteering - Elephant Project

I volunteered in Sri Lanka for 2 weeks from the 5th to the 19th August with PMGY and can honestly say I had the most amazing time and met the most amazing people.
The staff at PMGY were fantastic as soon as I had signed up, keeping me updated on my application and allowing my friend and I to book together. They helped me to book my flight and answered any questions I had, no matter how insignificant they were (Colby in particular was a great help, responding almost instantly and helping with many different aspects of my application). The volunteer handbook was very useful in getting a basic understanding of the culture and was helpful when trying to apply for visas etc.
The team in Sri Lanka were so welcoming and friendly; they always made an effort to have a conversation and a laugh with you and were also good at giving advice on what to do in Sri Lanka.

I stayed in River House, which although it wasn't the best, I had a great time there and made so many memories. There were a lot of bugs, a few problems with the bathroom (which the staff were very quick in dealing with once we'd actually told them!) and not a lot of room in the bedrooms but being in such close proximity to the other volunteers allowed us all to become very close friends. The swimming pool is a great area to allow you to talk to some of the other volunteers in other rooms and was lovely to be able to have a swim after a long morning of volunteering!
I personally really enjoyed the food at the accommodation. Lunches and dinners were usually very good and I tried a lot of new food that I otherwise wouldn't have had the chance to. Breakfast was much more repetitive and wasn't as great but many of us bought our own food to eat in the mornings.

Although it was harder work than I had expected, I really enjoyed doing the elephant project. It was an amazing experience to be so up close with the elephants and to be able to wash and feed them. Although they experienced some complications with one of the elephants and mahouts (which was completely out of PMGY's control) which slightly disrupted the normal routine of our project, the coordinators made sure we still got to work with the elephants everyday. On a typical day we would drive about an hour to get to the elephants, clean up the site e.g. shovelling elephant dung, sweeping leaves etc. There was then a short walk to the river where we would wash and scrub the elephants. We then fed the elephants, got loads of photos and then had an hour drive back to the house. There was also an elephant safari included in this project which was one of the best days on the project. We got up at about 3am and drove to Udawalawe National Park where we saw so many elephants - it was a great start to the 2 weeks!

I had one full weekend in Sri Lanka and used this to go on the Yala National Safari Weekend Trip. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the activities that we did (especially the World's End hike, Hindu temple and Yala National Safari Park), I felt like there wasn't enough time to spend in each place as we did so much travelling on the bus over just one weekend. However, it was a good way to be able to see things further afield in a short space of time. If I had been in Sri Lanka for another weekend, I definitely would have loved to use this for independent travel with my friends.

Overall, I had an amazing experience in Sri Lanka and the staff at PMGY were absolutely amazing from the beginning to the end. I would have loved to stay for longer than 2 weeks as I felt like there was so much more I had to see and I would have loved to have experienced some of the other projects too.