Man, I was excited for this day. Getting up at 6am and chomping down our breakfast pancakes so we could go meet the pick-up van at 7am in front of Cafe Hefalump. When we arrived at 6.50am, it soon dawned on us (mostly me) that the instruction email might have had some mistakes in it. Ours stated to be at the cafe at 7am for a 7.10am departure, so please have had breakfast already…which we had. All the other participants, however, arrived at 7am to sit down in the cafe, have their coffee and a breakfast cookie/cake. Luckily, departure was at 7.30am so we didn’t have to wait too long but I was slightly jealous of the cake for breakfast.
Instruction speech in the morning
A Dutch girl, Sabine, from our guesthouse showed up, too, so we had someone to talk to on the way to the Elephant Valley Project. The ride in the van was bumpy and very dusty, at least in the back row. All the dust from the 4WD seemed to be sucked up through the air vents to slowly settle down inside the car. When we stopped, I was happy to leave the dust trap and meet our guide for the day: John. He looked to be about 20 years old and is a volunteer at the project for one year.
The project offers different deals on seeing elephants; Flo and I had decided to go on a full day of elephant spotting instead of volunteering in the afternoon which would have made the whole thing cheaper but we would have seen less elephants.
In the morning, John sat us down in the shade and gave us an introduction to the project. It is designed to give working elephants a good retirement or, if they can be bought before retirement age, a good life, living like elephants. These ex working elephants can be visited and accompanied for a couple of hours which draws tourists who donate. In the background, the donations help keep the land protected for wild elephants who will hopefully start recovering in numbers one day. So you have a front of elephants who are kind of used to people and a protected invisible population of wild elephants which you are helping out. Before heading out, John also collected any banana visitors might have brought as the elephants get very jealous if they smell that you have bananas and they don’t. We had brought half a bunch as emergency snacks during hiking so we put it in the car to be delivered to base camp where we would have lunch.
Couple with elephants …
First stop today would be a valley occupied by a small herd of four female elephants who have met on the premises and get along very well: Ning Wan, the matriarch, Mae Nang, the most troubled one, Pearl, the young one, and the stunted Ruby, who thinks she’s a big boy and acts as a bodyguard for the others. All of them have worked before living their lives as elephants in the forest; most in logging which gave them scars around the neck from dragging heavy loads. Ruby has probably been captured too early which stunted her growth making her look like a tiny version of an elephant. After retiring, all of them had to learn natural elephant behaviour. Taking a bath is a very good example: Naturally, elephants bathe regularly to clean their skin before applying the next round of mud and dirt. At least two of these four elephants though do not know how to do that. Ruby walks into the water unwillingly and then stands there, looking miserable while her mahout splashes her with water and cleans her back. Pearl seems to have a bit of fun at least and dunks under water on her own account.
Elephants are very slow, deliberate creatures so there was a lot of “waiting” or watching the elephants doing not a lot. As a snack, John distributed red ants to anyone who wanted to try them and of course, Flo was up for it. He liked it quite well; it had a sour taste.
Following these four into the forest where they munched their way up a small hill, we got hungry, too, and headed to base camp for lunch and a nap. Here, it turned out that our half a bunch of bananas had arrived but was mistaken for elephant snacks. One of them had already eaten them whole and apparently liked them quite well. Oh well, that was a good use of them. Poor Flo had no bananas though and was gifted two from base camp. 🙂
Milot is currently underweight due to her problems with chewing plant material
Continuing the day at 1.45pm, we then went into a different valley to see Milot. She is only 52 which means she has a good 20 years still to go but her teeth are so broken already that she has trouble chewing plant material. So she is fed extra bamboo and bananas with vitamins. When we were watching her, she was supposed to also take a bath but couldn’t be bothered after one dunk. She rather took off towards her usual feeding place for more bananas. Before being out of view, she went for a bum scratch though which looked hilarious but I didn’t get it on camera.
The third and last valley we visited is inhabited by Easyrider and Gee Nowl, who are BFFs in elephant terms. Easyrider is a bit of a troublemaker and a bully so she had to be separated from the herd in the first valley and Gee Nowl came with her for company.
Cuddles from Easyrider help to calm her down again
Easyrider is the healthiest looking animal as her spine is not protruding so much which means she wasn’t forced to wear a basket which pushes the ribes down, leaving the spine exposed. However, during her time with WWF when she was hunting poachers, she went into a trap and got a bamboo spear into her flank. This is where her huge scar is coming from. She also has a bit of a background in logging which Flo had to think about when she, out of the blue, decided that this tree was in her way and sent it tumbling down. In general, Easyrider gives you the most variety of behaviours when you are watching her, probably because she is so headstrong.
Exhausted, we headed back to our pick-up van at 5pm. In town, we fell into an eatery to have dinner before walking to our guest house for an early night.
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Instruction speech in the morning
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Trekking down into the first valley
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Called elephant chains
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Not really Nina’s taste, this bridge
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Hmm, yummy, red ant!
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All finally lined up half asleep for the morning bath
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Couple with elephants …
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Pearly playing with a stick
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all assembled, with differing levels of participation
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Ruby totally passive getting soaked
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She had it sorted – perisc-trunk and all
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Did not move for the whole procedure and looked miserable
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and the mud comes back on
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300 kg food per day – that takes some time to munch up
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They were surprisingly good at hiding and pretty quiet when not ripping through the foilage
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Lunch time!
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Nap time!
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Milot is currently underweight due to her problems with chewing plant material
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That’s enough of a bath…go somewhere else with your bucket!
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Throwing a bit of a tantrum because it is bathing time
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Cuddles from Easyrider help to calm her down again
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First, you apply water…
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….then, you scrub the back!
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Front seat at the show
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Easyrider squeezing through two trees for an extra side scratch
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The only picture where you can see her might scar near the hip
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Elephants are surprisingly well camouflaged in forest
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That looks pretty cool
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Made it back to the base!
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Now I just need to get back to the van…
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…but it is still very hot
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