The day before Thanksgiving, we took a trip to Baan Chang elephant sanctuary with our good friend Emalie. Baan Chang meaning "elephant home" is home to 42 rescued elephants. These elephants were formerly work elephants or elephants performing in the city with poor qualities of life. Each elephant has it's own Mahout that's stays with the elephant (as seen in the photo above). All the mahouts live at Baan Chang with the their families and the elephants. All the men are either Thai or Burmese, and we learned 4 basic commands, and words of praise in Thai and Burmese when working with the elephants.
Spending a full day at Baan Chang we first took time to feed the elephants snacks of bananas and sugar cane. These guys eat a lot. 300kg for each elephant! Check out this pile of bananas:
Having learned basic commands, we took some time for a little bareback ride around the property. It was a very cool experience to ride such a massive creature, and pretty humbling to know that the elephant was really the one "driving."
They are pretty cute, and very cool creatures. They all have different personalities and can be quite naughty too. None of the elephants are from the same herd, and have to be saparated by chains at times to keep them from fighting. It also helps to prevent them destroying things or devastating the crops of nearby farmers. While they were walking around off their chains for a while, one of them ran out into the crop of banana trees and easily plucked a tree out of the ground like it was a flower and then ate the tree (below).They are so strong it's unreal.
No comments:
Post a Comment