As a birthday treat for me David booked a week volunteering at the Elephant Nature Park which is just outside Chang Mai. This park is very much into conserving animals and has become a home to many animals in need. Originally it was just elephants and this is still their main priority but they also have many cats , dogs, buffalo, pigs and chickens.
We were picked up at our hotel and headed to the main office along with all the other volunteers. after paper work was completed we were told to go and choose a t shirt and a water bottle then we headed off to the sanctuary. On the way to the sanctuary we watched two videos one on being safe around elephants the other was on dangers that elephants face today.
On arrival at the sanctuary we had a quick walk through showing us where key places were such as toilets, kitchen area, etc but as we did this a food truck arrived so we were quickly set to work. David jumped onto the back of the truck with one of the guides while the rest of us formed two lines and transferred a load of pumpkins onto shelves.
At the side of the kitchen area this elephant was stood all by herself, as you can see she has a deformed hip. It was actually broken when she was forced to breed , she now walks with a limp with the damaged leg being shorter and skinnier than the other. 
As we wandered around the many platforms and skywalks in the centre we came across these elephants who had just been fed a load of fruit, I do not know their stories yet.
At about half three each day three elephants come to the river to be bathed, they are too old or unsteady on their feet to roll about in the water and bathe themselves so buckets of water are thrown on them while they eat fruit.
In the evening we had a meeting with one of the guides and it gave people in the group a chance to meet each other properly.
We are given three meals a day which are all vegetarian, there is plenty of choice and nobody goes hungry. After our tea we just sat talking with other people at the table which was lovely, we met Sue who is elephant crazy and who has been following this sanctuary on Facebook for years and was able to give us a lot of details about different elephants who have been rescued.
We eventually headed to our bed, the room is basic but comfortable, David fell asleep very quickly I slept on and off with many of the jungle noises waking me up. Nothing totally freaked me out although there were some strange things I heard. At one point I was convinced something was in the
room with us and I was going to put the torch on but thought ignorance was bliss and went back to sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment