Elephant’s World – Kanchanaburi
We just arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat for the next 3 days but Elephant’s World near Kanchanaburi, Thailand was very cool. They are a new organization (less than 2 years) that rescues elephants that are too old to continue working (mostly logging). The logging might be very hard work but if an elephant can’t work in logging camps (used in Burma but not Thailand) or give elephant rides then the elephant and mahout (elephant’s keeper) usually become beggars. Elephant’s World now has 7 elephants. 5 are old elephants, 1 younger elephant was detusked (a horrible, greedy practice) and is also blind in one eye. And they also have a baby (3.5 yrs old) elephant that they recently purchased (very expensive) as a rescue.
The focus of Elephant’s World is to be a sanctuary for elephants instead of being a tourist attraction (they do want tourists though). A lot of elephant camps in Thailand focus on tourism like painting, riding and shows (and some are ridiculously expensive) but Elephant’s World doesn’t. They do single day tours where you work (but not hard) with the mahouts on their daily tasks. Most of this is preparing 500 lbs (it’s alot) of food for them to eat.
Washing the pesticides off of the watermelons for an elephant snack
Making a giant pot of sticky rice with pumpkin for two old toothless elephants
I cut the sugarcane and she carried it to the truck
The detusked and partially blind elephant
A mahout and his son
Bath time for the elephants (and us) and a little fun for us
The end of bath time
Part of the Elephant’s World staff/volunteers – there are a lot of people working hard there and they gave us a great tour of daily life at their elephant sanctuary
You win, your day feeding, bathing, and frolicking with elephants is way cooler than my short and dusty ride in MN. What an awesome way to spend a day!