Elephants of Kulen Mountain

On my last weekend here I took the day to hang out with some elephants. Not much more to say than that. I when to the Kulen mountain elephant preserve. They have nine elephants, seven female and two male Asian elephants.  The over all population in Cambodia is not doing too well. The guide told us that there are around 400 elephants in country, including wild, preserve captive and zoos.  Which is way less than the populations in Thailand, Vietnam and Loas; which all number in the thousands.

It seems that many of the elephants that use to live in Cambodia, understood that something bad was happening during the Khmer Rouge and took off to these other countries and haven’t come back yet. I’m not sure that true, but they are very smart and probably know more than we think. 

Anyway, the Kulen Mountain is about an hour drive outside the city. The mountain is a really population place to visit, which we did on the last trip with Vincent and Liam.  

The elephant preserve is at the foot of Kulen Mountain. It is an open preserve meaning that there is no fence around it.  It is, however, surrounded by local farmers and villagers, who also believe in the work of the preserve and have vowed to not harm the elephants if they go into their crop lands. The elephants can generally go where ever they want, but they accompanied by handlers 24-hours a day.

The relationship between the elephants and their handlers is very close.  The handlers know the elephants very well, after spending years together. The cool part is that it is the elephants that decide who will be chosen as an handler after their initial five day and five-night trial period.

The lady elephants also have best friends. They hang out together all the time.  When it’s sleep time, one sleeps while the other stay awake watches, and then they switch after about two hours.  Also, I think our guide said that if they spend too much time sleeping, their trunks can fall asleep and they have to shake them out to get them to work again. 

Our adventure started when we made special treats for the elephants:

Here I am carrying the treats in a really serious manner.

We mixed rice, rice husk, water, salt, tamarind, and banana.

We met three of the ladies:

We met two other ladies:

We saw from a distance one of the dudes elephants. They are too aggressive for us to get close. 

Male Asian elephants have long tusks 

Females have little tiny ones just by their trunks  

FYI: both female and male African Elephants have tusks   

Then we got to give them baths.  

And then they walked out of my life

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