Elephant Sanctuary Part 5

if you’ve missed the previous parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

That’s Lek! she makes an appearance later part of the day to talk to us. we were lucky she was around during our visit. Read her story here on how she became a mother to elephants.

This is Hope. he was in a very sorry state when the rescue workers were called to get him, but now he’s a happy playful elephant at the reserve. The stories of all the elephants Lek has rescued over the years are found here.

Lek invited us to sit on the field and Hope ran up and down, allowing us to touch him.

Other residents of the camp.

here’s the food chain at the elephant reserve.

There was a story of another female elephant, whose name I forgot. She was found working at a hotel and taught to greet guests upon check-in and do all sorts of small things to entertain them. Hence, she was more used to humans than elephants so it took her awhile to befriend any elephant at the park, preferring a solitary life at the start.

one of the baby elephants love being rubbed down by his mahout.

at the end of the day, the elephants were brought back to their pens to be fed leaves and corn. considering they had a whole bunch of fruit in the morning, they sure as hell eat a lot!

This is a video of Lek rescuing one of the elephants.

I hope some of you reading this will be moved as I was, especially after spending a day with these elephants. If you’re so inclined, do visit the elephants at a conservation or rescue park and have a hand at taking care of these giants. if not, you can help out in small ways by sponsoring a lunch US$10 (that’s the cost of one bowl of tampopo ramen) or a medical kit US$25 (the price of a pair of shoes from Charles & Keith). else, it’s ONLY US$75 a year to sponsor an elephant. it costs a lot to take care of these poor elephants, and as you can tell from the video, it costs a lot more to buy an elephant from an owner so that they can bring it to the nature park.

There are only 30,000 elephants left in this world.

Elephant Sanctuary Part 3 – Bath Time

if you’ve missed the previous parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

The other part of the day that the elephants look forward to apart from eating is bathing. despite it being “winter” at that time of the year, it was still relatively hot during the day and the elephants appreciate a dip in the river like any other animal. since there’s only one river, each herd had to take its turn to use the baths. We were all given buckets and hard bristle brushes and we marched to the river after the elephants.

I HAZ BUCKETZ!

The wooden walkways extended all the way to the river so we waited above ground while the mahouts walked their charges to the river in a row.

The beautiful elephants set against the wonderful backdrop of nature.

Okay I don’t remember all the elephants’ names and I can’t really tell them apart. But i remember these 2 old ladies of the camp coz their story warmed the cockles of my heart. This is Mae Tee (the one with the weak ankles) and Mae Kham Paan. or maybe it’s Mae Khum Kaew, another old lady in the park. anyway these 2 elephants are very cute. according to the guide, one of the female elephants is very shy and her friend is very protective of her. she will wait for her shy friend wherever she goes, and if any elephant from another herd dares come too close, she’d trumpet a warning and chase off the other elephant so they won’t bother her shy friend. I actually saw it happen that day and i was thoroughly amused and touched to see such a close friendship exist among elephants.

my heart breaks to see her hind legs wobble like that but the guides reassured us she’s not in any pain.

so we all marched into the river and started scooping the water with the buckets and throwing it onto the thick hide of the elephants. they probably can do it themselves with their trunks but they don’t mind a little extra help from us. it also helps us bond a little better with these elephants.

possible pooping action.

with so many volunteers crawling over the elephants and giving them all the attention they deserve, I decided to scrub her ass with the brush as part of her spa treatment.

after the scrub treatment, the elephants had free use of the spa facilities which included dunking in the relaxation pool or simply play in the cold water jacuzzi.

Hello Ma’am, I hope you’re pleased with your treatment today. Would you like to sign a package? You can share with your friends. Today special promotion!

Part 3 of 5

Elephant Sanctuary Part 1

In December 2009 when we were in Chiang Mai, Bryan suggested visiting the elephants at the local elephant sanctuary Elephant Nature Park. This park is run by its founder, a pint-sized lady with a big heart Lek, and unlike many other elephant camps where elephants are kept to earn a living entertaining tourists or ferrying them around, these elephants are left to roam freely in an open area and taken care of by volunteers.

As a fan of elephants, imagine my excitement at being able to go up close to these gentle giants. I was prepared with my mammoth t-shirt. We booked ourselves on a one day tour of the park, which started bright an early with a mini van that came to pick us up at the hotel. The drive to the park was about an hour long, located in a natural valley bordered by a river.

The park has several programmes for volunteers to participate in. we were there on the shortest tour, there are others that allow you to stay anywhere from 2 to 14 nights as you help out at the park and learn about the elephants. there are a few who stay for months taking care of these elephants on the long term programme.

When we arrived, there were already volunteers from the week long programme who are hard at work preparing food for the elephants, who can eat up to about 250kg of food per day PER ELEPHANT. that’s a shit load of bananas and pumpkins to prepare! the truck reverses itself into what is the food preparation hut and the volunteers form 3 lines and toss the fruit from the truck onto the shelves. Further down, another group of staff pick through the fruit and pack them into individual baskets (shown above). Each basket has a name of an elephant. The park has about 30 elephants to date.

The main compound of the park includes the teaching and living quarters. Here the guide introduces us to the members of the park, which not only include elephants and humans, but also dogs and cats, as Lek doesn’t discriminate who wanders into her nature reserves. she tells us which animals are friendly and which are not, so we know better who to approach or not.

I’m not sure why though. probably don’t want any puking incidences.

Part of the family.

This was the more adventurous of the cats in the compound, who was slinking around us along the beams of the hut. bored, she pounced on the other black cat and they started fighting. flying tufts of hair ensure.

we were put in a common area so that the staff can tell us about the elephant rescue programmes and what they’ve been doing to help these elephants. they also taught us simple elephant behaviours like what to look out for in case an elephant panics and also ran through a list of dos and don’ts while in the park. as punishment, she grabbed the naughtiest cat and used her as demonstration on what to do when an elephant lies down like that (as seen above).

when class was over, we walked out to take a look at the elephants grazing in the sun. ok perhaps grazing isn’t the correct word to use. not sure if elephants nibble on grass.

further away from the main compound is a hut where they treat the elephants with medicine and care.

Here comes the first curious group. Most of the elephants at the park are old elephants who worked at logging camps all their lives until the government abolished logging. This left many elephants homeless and unwanted. While some of the elephants are released into the wild, most of them continue working at elephant camps as performers in animal shows. I had been to one of those as a kid. The staff got me to stand in the centre of the tent as an elephant curled his trunk around my body and lifted me up, much to the delight of the crowd while I was screaming the house down, not because he was rough, the elephant was very gentle. I was just chicken shit at that age. Thinking about it now, I feel slightly guilty as having participated in one of those shows where they exploited these poor elephants.

This is Part 1 of 5. To donate it’s only US$10 for one lunch or  US$25 for a medical kit. or US$75 a year to sponsor an elephant

if you’ve missed the previous parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5