Seeing Elephants Roam at a Wildlife Refuge

Arrival
We arrived at I Love Phants Lodge late afternoon there were tons of elephants all around us in surrounding enclosures. They were free to roam in massive enclosures unlike some of the other elephants we have seen on our trip so far. Many have been chained up so that they can’t wander, which is really sad. When we got to the lodge we got a welcome drink to enjoy then we took a golf cart stuffed with our luggage to the cabin. Once we got settled we convinced our parents to go on a short walk around our cabin where cages with animals were everywhere. Right outside of our hut there was a large cage with two small hornbills which are birds that look a bit like toucans. As we started to wander farther we saw lots of gibbons, I never really knew the difference between apes and monkeys but I learned that gibbons, which are apes don’t have tails while monkeys do. We came to a cage with a really loud gibbon (who we later called Whoop) my mom gave him that name because he loudly made whooping noises that we could hear clearly from our hut.

Trapped
When we went back to our room after dinner we realized that a gecko was inside, so we decided to try to help it get out. We attempted many times at catching the gecko but it was fast, finally we decided to open the door and let the gecko out on it’s own as it had wandered near the door. Our parents had put an extra secure travel lock on the door for safety but when they tried to get it out it was stuck it was doing it’s job to well, now no one could get in or out. My parents tried everything, it was supposed to be an early bedtime because we had been missing out on sleep but it was almost 10:00 pm already. My dad decided to jump off the balcony to try and open it from the outside but since the house was raised off the ground pretty high it made it harder. Finally when he climbed back into the room my parents told us to go to bed and we would call for help in the morning. The owners never respond to text messages so our dad jumped out again and walked all the way to the lodge, and came back with help. They had the right tools and we were out very fast. It turned out that is was the original lock on the door that was not working and not the security lock.

Animal awareness
We got ready for the day and had a delicious buffet for breakfast at the lodge before heading to a separate building with a large screen. We then watched a video about the horrible conditions and abuse they have saved animals from. It was really sad but it is good to be aware of what is happening to animals all around us. I also felt really bad that we took a elephant ride in India even though we were not aware how terribly they are treated. On our drive a day earlier to the elephant reserve I had been doing research and had found out that elephants go though a process called crushing. Crushing is when people take a young elephant away from their mother and torture them in many ways to get them to be submissive and do whatever the person wants them to do.

Pai Lin
After the video we met up with our tour group and guide whose name was Val. We got onto a tour bus and took a short drive to the first area which was a large fenced off area that was home to an elephant named Pai Lin. Pai Lin is the oldest elephant at the reserve and is known as the grandmother of the herd. Val informed us that on average elephants lived around 60 years in the wild while in captivity (as long as they are treated well) they can live until their 80s. Pai Lin is estimated to be in her early 80s so extremely old for an elephant. Then we went on a walk by lots of cages and learned about each animal and why they were rescued, we saw many animals including:

• Southern cassowary
• Dusky leaf monkey
• Lar gibbon 
• Rhesus macaque
• Brahminy kite
• Slow Loris
• Tortoises
• Otters

Tigers
When we were finished the walk we headed back to the lodge for a delicious lunch of watermelon and chicken. When it was time for the afternoon tour we took a bus to the big cat rescue area and almost immediately we saw a female tiger relaxing by a pond. There were tons more following us along the large enclosure, when the vehicle came to a stop we were at at the beginning of a path that went in between two tiger cages. We walked through and a tiger came as close to us as the cage let him, which was under two feet away from us! It was really cool, he seemed pretty calm even with us right by him. Val told us that he was rescued at 2 years old from Phuket Zoo which was shut down during the Covid-19 pandemic. We were told that there were two places that the tigers were rescued from Phuket Zoo and a temple. This was because in the main religion of Thailand, which is Buddhism, if a person does not want their pet any more they can leave them at a temple. The person in charge will then care for them, except usually animals like cats and dogs show up not tigers. They had no idea where the tigers had come from originally.

Animal interactions
When we were done admiring the tiger’s beauty we headed to the leopard’s enclosure where two of them were huddled together. They were very pretty and we were glad that we got to see them because we did not get to see any leopards on our safari in India. The last part of our tour was feeding elephants! I never knew that elephants ate watermelon but when we arrived at the elephant handfeeding area there was a huge bucket of cut up watermelon. The tour group was split into two groups, each group fed a different elephant, each person in the group took turns putting a piece of watermelon in the elephants trunk.