A Day With the Elephants

Elephants have been used, and still are to a lesser degree, as work animals in the timber industry in Myanmar.  There’s a movement to eliminate this practice and measures have been taken already to restrict their use.  This creates a problem with what to do with the retired elephants.  Today, we spent the day at an elephant reserve that has taken in several of these displaced animals.

We took a bus into the mountains to reach the reserve.  It gave us a chance to see all the farming activities along the way.  This is the end of the sugar cane season so they are both harvesting and burning the fields.  Smoke hung in the air burning our lungs.  They also have fires in all the houses to cook over and heat the homes when the temperature drops at night.

We were given an introduction to the activities that occur at the reserve.  They currently have 6 elephants they care for, 5 adults and 1 small one that was orphaned.  Along with the elephants come their handlers that were also displaced when the elephants were taken out of service. They have houses in a small gathering and it is growing. 

Elephants are huge animals and it takes a lot of fuel to keep them going.  Our first encounter with them was as food providers to two of them.  Today we were feeding them cut-up pumpkin and banana stalks.  They never seemed to grow full, constantly looking for their next mouthful.  They would take several pieces in their trunks before eating them. They also allowed us to place the food directly into their mouths.  The pumpkin was the more popular food but the banana stalk provides water to them which is why it’s part of the food mix.

Next, those that wanted were given native pants to change into before we made our way to the river to meet back up with the elephants.  We both made our way into the water for bath time. The elephants laid down into water and we soaped them up with natural scrubbers then splashed the suds off.  They really enjoy their time in the water.  Because they have very few sweat glands, it’s an important way to cool them off so they go into the river at least twice a day.

Our time with the elephants over, we enjoyed a late lunch of regional cuisine which included rice, curry, little fried pastry triangles (like samosas) stuffed with chicken and finished up with a banana cake.  It was excellent.  We got back on our bus for our 2 ½ hour trip back home and most of us used the time for a nice little siesta.  On our own for the evening, we had dinner, looked through our pictures and went to bed early.