Finally, the ELEPHANTS! Hoorah!!

It only took two years of talking about it for Peter and I to get to the Elephant Nature Park but its been the experience of a lifetime. Imagine waking up every day (at 6.30am without the need for an alarm clock would you believe?), opening the window on your bamboo hut to look out over lush green fields with elephants ambling by. Heaven.

The sanctuary (about 1½ drive north of Chiang Mai) was started in 1995 by a lady called Lek who is from a tribal village in northern Thailand and was brought up around elephants. She, however, seems to be one of the few Thais who think the horrifyingly brutal "breaking-in" process inflicted on young elephants and the commonplace harsh treatment and overworking of all elephants is something that needs to change. Even though elephants are considered a national symbol of Thai culture and revered throughout it's history, if domesticated they are only classified as livestock and thus treated as such.

Lek was in Myanmar with Jeff, the operations manager, trying to get the fledgling tourist trade there to understand the benefits of wild elephant tourism (as opposed to camp elephant tourism which is so prevalent in Thailand) so unfortunately we only met her a day or two before we left. But she has a fantastic team of dedicated employees who keep the place running: firstly, there's Pom (who we nicknamed The General as she keeps everything in running order), Michelle (the never-short-of-something-to-say, very informative and friendly park guide) and her husband Carl (mahout to the big guy Max and general overall watcher of animal welfare). Then there are the kitchen staff who made loads of the most delicious dishes I've had since being vegetarian (it's worth going to ENP just for the food, seriously), and Ning who didn't mind when we took over, cleaned and redesigned the shop for her. Included here should also be Louise, the new and lovely fund raiser but unfortunately we didn't get a picture of her (sorry Louise).

And then of course there are all the mahouts...

And all the cats and doggies and other very large critters...