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Published: August 16th 2013
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Carys loves animals and was at home immediately with this 8 month old baby elephant Today was an incredible day and there is no way that my words will do it justice. But since I tried to describe the Hanoi traffic, I'll give this a shot too.
We were collected from our hotel around 7:45am and driven about 45 minutes up into the foothills of the mountains. Our destination was the Patara Elephant Farm. It gets first place on Trip Advisor for all activities in Chiang Mai, and our friend Susan has visited it, loved it and recommended it. The farm adopts elephants from work places and circuses, and gives them a new home where they seem to lead a pretty fun and easy life among a big group. The elephants each have their own mahout and aren't there to balance on two legs or kick a ball etc. Instead they just do elephant stuff....eat, roll in the dirt, eat, sleep, eat, wander around, eat, eat and eat. The farm has a successful breeding program and they claim to have had 18 births and zero deaths since the farm opened 14 years ago. The general idea for us visitors is to get paired up with an elephant, make sure she likes you, then become her
keeper for the day. Feed her, clean her, wash her etc.
I had one called Taptong who was 32 years old, Sand and Carys worked with a big girl called Mamoon and Ben got his own 6 year old who was conveniently also called Ben! We were all given smart local mahout clothes as it makes the elephants comfortable and protects us from their rough, hairy skin. First up was to feed them bananas, sugar cane and grasses. Feeding is a great way to make friends. An ice breaker. Next the health check. There are a variety of ways to ensure the animal is well, but the most amusing was certainly a close inspection of her poo! Quantify it, smell it, squeeze it and rub it. Nice!!
From there we gave the elephants a bit of a clean and learned how to climb on and ride them. They taught us a variety of commands, all in the language of the Karen ethnic group. If only I'd listened in my Karen lessons at school I might have known that "ma" means "come", that "by" means "go" and that "how" means "stop". Obvious really.
Armed with that, we set
off on a surprisingly long trek. Riding an elephant is daunting as first as you're very high up and there is no saddle - just a rope behind you to grab should you need it. You sit way up on her head with your legs behind her ears. The elephants are extremely strong but very gentle. They could throw you easily but thankfully they don't seem bothered by a human sitting on their head. First through forests and then along paths and a road to a pool by a waterfall. There we washed the elephants and messed about in the water with them. An amazing experience. After that the mahouts took the animals away while we feasted on a picnic of local food. I think the reason that the elephants were removed is simply because they have to eat almost constantly and they'd have raided our picnic in a heartbeat!
A short ride back up the hill away from the river and the day with the elephants was done. We spent about 5 hours at the farm and we all loved it. It was no surprise that Carys was keen as she loves all animals, but I have to
say that it was lovely to see Ben (the boy, not the elephant) get so into the whole event. It's a must-do thing if you ever visit Chiang Mai.
Tomorrow we'll spend most of the day in Chiang Mai, then head for the airport in the afternoon. Next stop is Singapore where we'll stay with Andy and Anna-Marie.
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