Elephant Nature Park: Day 2 (Last day)

Waking up at 6:30 for a 7:00am breakfast, we are waking up with the rest of the park. Mahouts are leading their charges out of the cages and the elephants are free to wander around. With no tourists with baskets to feed them, we really get to see them in what is as close to nature as possible, in the 300 acre park.

We are led to a few of the more “non-injured” herds, who both have 1-2yr old babies and it’s amazing to see how they just interact with each other. One herd, the mother gave birth after arriving at the park when she had one of her feet blown up my a mine, and two older females act as surrogates to help contain the young bull. He’s full of energy and it’s with mom hobbling about, and you can just see the two matrons sighing with his antics. A lone female who has yet to get with a herd is nearby and the young one ventured over, nuzzling her. She reciprocated and you could tell the loner really liked it. (don’t all mothers like to hold and cuddle babies!)

After a while, the mom had called & junior wasn’t coming back, so the two surrogates walk over and the loner backs away reluctantly and ventures off, but you could sense sadness. Perhaps in the future, she will be accepted to that or another herd.

We walked over to the enclosure where the bulls are at – they are much more difficult to control, and stay about 15′ away as one of the bulls (Monkey boy) will start tossing things at people if he’s not fed enough. We didn’t get to see that, but as we were watching a mahout feed the bulls, a female came right up to me without me noticing, smelling me for food. Turned out this was the blind one. I was amazed at how quietly she sneaked up on us. She made a beeline for the mahout with the food.

It was another day of feeding & bathing and saying goodbye. We also went over & saw where they are caring for over 400 stray dogs in nice enclosures. They also have well over 200 cats + about 90 water buffalo. It was a very special 2 days. All meals were vegetarian, which was fine with me. Tons of great food to eat, I was never left wanting & they have plenty of ice cold drinks – including root beer which was a first for a long time for Jackson!

As we were driving home, Lek, the matronly woman who started this over 20 years ago, is really trying to give these statuesque elephants some dignified last days and it’s commendable. The entire staff at the park and all the guides are so respectful. Tons of volunteers were at the park – staying 1, 2 or even 4 weeks at a time. After being there for 2 days, it’s easy to see ourselves volunteering sometime in the future. A really special place.

There is a 100 pictures that I haven’t shown which are amazing, these just give you a small taste of what we experienced.

Thanks again Holly for the recommendation!