Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary

When we in KL, one of the places that we visited was the Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary. I stumbled across the sanctuary by chance when I was surfing on the net before my arrival, but when I asked around, I was surprise to find that only one friend has heard about it, but she did not know anything about it. In brief, the sactuary relocates wild elephants, and is near Temerloh in Pahang. It took us about 2 hours by car from KL (about 1 hour's drive from Gombak).

This site has details about the sanctuary and this their activities. Entry to the centre is free, but donations are very welcome. However, there isn't a donation box. Instead I was told me to go to the office next door to 'tulis', presumably to issue a cheque, but as we were in a hurry we left, but you can donate by TT or post a cheque.



This is the elephant ride. One thing I never knew was that elephants had hair, and wiry ones at that. I actually felt quite disrespectful sitting on that 70 year old elephant!








The elephants are given a shower before being fed by the visitors to the centre. There was watermelon, papaya, bananas which were chopped into baskets ready for the visitors to feed them after their wash.





This little one, swiped a fruit from the basket as it was walking past, on it's way to be chained for it's shower. It got a tap on the trunk with a rottan for it's trouble. Obviously the fruits were too tempting, because as it was lying there (as in the photo), it swung it's trunk above it's head to see where the fruits were, but had to be contented with just smelling them as the baskets were too far away



This is bathing with the big elephant...
















... and this is bathing with the baby elephants.


The bigger of the baby elephants is very attached to it's keeper. As they were going back to their enclosure, the keeper stopped to talk to someone. When it realised that, the elephant ran back, calling all the time, to get him and was only satisfied when he came along.


Baby Elephant Walk