Katie and I just spent 3 days in a beautiful small village near Chiang Mai. It was an elephant conservation center. This place doubled as a self sustaining village where the Mahouts (the people who took care of the elephants) lived and worked and farmed and everything. These guys were pretty much married to their elephant. One of them even left his house in Lampang to live there. Pum, the guy who took care of Katie's elephant would go twice during the night and feed his elephant. It was very amazing how the elephant seemingly able to communicate back with the Mahout somehow. My Mahout has been with Pankut for 12 years now. I guess 12 years together every day and you learn how to speak to each other.
elephant bath. This water was not exactly the cleanest water ever. It seemed like the elephants would always wait until they got into the water to poop. Notice the softball or larger sized clumps of elephant poo that are floating around in the water we are spraying at each other. Pretty gross but oh well. It was way fun.
We got to trek out into the forest and clean off and feed our elephants each morning at 6:30 am. It was super cold then by the way. After that we would trek back into the camp where it was time for the bath. This early morning bath didn't usually have the same playfulness that the other 2 baths for the day got. Since it was so cold it was usually just an in and out hope you dont get to wet kind of a deal.
Me leading the pack
This is where we stayed. Our room was connected to the home of one of the Mahouts
Long shot of the village
This is a little 8 month old baby elephant named Kaelynn, who was very interested in my camera. .....Eric
1 comments:
What a great time. Although Katie's elephant seemed to be a better squirter, it also spent more time under water - result Katie got wetter then Eric in the end. Mike McGann
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