Elephants & Friends

This morning, I had made plans to go to a small elephant sanctuary near Kanchanaburi. My plan was to stay there until Friday. Phot, the sanctuary's owner, picked me up at 9am. We arrived at the sanctuary about a half hour later.

Turns out, I was the only foreigner volunteering. His girlfriend had just had a baby 2 days ago, and his whole family was visiting. He showed me to my cabin - a bamboo shack on stilts with holes in the floor and woven bamboo walls. Luckily, he didn't ask me to stay in his newly-built tree house. He proudly asked me to go up & look at it - I made it up the ladder, but couldn't go any further. The floor was a criss-crossing of discarded scraps of wood, with gaping holes. From the outside, it looked like it was missing a key support beam. He apologized & told me it wasn't quite ready yet, otherwise I could have stayed there. Darn.

I dropped off my bags, then myself, Phot and his one mahout, went off into the jungle to fetch his 3 elephants. He keeps them on 50 foot chains so that they have shade and access to food.

Mali is a former logging elephant who had her back leg broken when some logs crashed into her. She's had surgery, but she still has some deformation and favors her front legs. Som Boon's ears have quite literally been torn to shreds - Phot wasn't sure how. Her left ear is about a quarter of the size it should be, and has 3 long tears in it that make it look more like a tattered piece of fabric. Kamun is pregnant and due sometime next year (gestation for elephants is 22 months).

We took the elephants to the river - deep and fast-moving. Impossible to bathe them without sitting on top of them. The elephants enjoy the water - gives them a chance to drink and cool themselves, although as soon as they leave the water, they cover themselves in dirt to protect their skin from the sun & insects.

The trip to & from the river is incredibly slow. Thai elephants normally have a life-long mahout. In Thailand, they say it's almost like being married - the mahout is constantly by his side, and the elephant learns to obey all his commands. Phot has had his three elephants for less than 2 years, and has just recently hired a second mahout. As a result, the elephants aren't as obedient as they would normally be - the half kilometer into the jungle took almost an hour.

Turns out, Phot doesn't have much for me to do here. Once we were done with the elephants, everyone (there are about 10 of his family members visiting) spent the afternoon lying under a bamboo shelter.