We caught a local bus out to the Elephant Sanctuary and hospital. There was a parade of elephants of different ages with their mahouts. Each elephant has two mahouts - often a father and son- to work with the elephant for 50 years or so.
The elephants arrive at the sanctuary and are taught the skills they need to work in the logging industry. many elephants were taken by the courts because their owners ill-treated them, or the owners couldn't afford to feed them as they got bigger.The elephants in the hospital had leg infections from the chains used to hold them and some had stood on landmines in Burma. It was so sad to see some of the elephants who were ill-treated rocking back and forth, flapping their ears and clutching their trunks between their legs.
There was a mahout course that you could enrol in for a week or so, but we decided that it was not a retirement career path we would like!
Guess what this is? Washed elephant dung ready to be made into paper!
