Elephant Bath Time

This is one of my many photos from our day at the Elephant Nature Park, about and hour and a half outside of Chiang Mai. It was one of the highlights of the whole holiday.

It's a brilliant place, set up by a lady to take in mistreated elephants from around Thailand.

We were picked up by a minbus from our hostel and shown a video as we drove away from Chiang Mai and the scenery gradually descended into beautiful light jungle.

Once we arrived we were shown around and were soon out with the elephants, feeding each one a huge bucket of chopped mango or something. You hold a piece out in your hand and they stick out their trunks and gently take it from you.

After heading back to the main area for a delicious buffet lunch and more elephant feeding we came back to the river area to go in with the elephants and chuck buckets of water over their back. It's amazing being in the water with these huge animals. They usually stuck around us and then got out when they were done but some, like the one in this photo, went a bit deeper to roll around in the current, which was great to watch.

After this we just wandered around, watching different elephants, some hosing people with water from their trunks, others scratching their backs (just like that bear from the Jungle Book) on the posts that make the boardwalk. They seemed like really happy elephants!

Uploaded 21/06/2012