The view of Malaysia from atop an elephant

Sometimes you wake up in the morning, and have no idea what weird and strange and unusual things you’ll be doing that day.

Today was like that: little did I know that I’d be having a day walking around muddy rivers, washing elephants down and riding them around the jungle!

The Japanese group I’ve befriended at the Backpackers Travellers Inn in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia invited me to visit the Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary, about an hour and a half north of KL, with them today.

I’m traveling: why not? 😀

Actually I had ridden an elephant once before, on a 2005 trip to Thailand, but the Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary offers more for visitors to do, and it was a really nice experience.

(Note: Most images in this post are low-quality video stills. Sorry about that. I wasn’t as blog-savvy at the time as I have since become.)

What to do at Kuala Gandah

If you go here, your time at the sanctuary will probably be divided into three basic parts as mine was:

• Bathing with the elephants
• Feeding chunks of fruit to the elephants
• Riding the elephants around a little dirt circle

Taking a bath with the elephants

The Sungai Teris (Teris River) runs through the sanctuary grounds, and staff members ride on the creatures’ great, wide shoulders down a little ramp into the shallow creek. Half-submerged, the elephants are bathed in the muddy-looking river water by staff and by visitors who are invited to dunk themselves in the drink and pat the animals. (You should bring a change of clothes for this.)

I got in the river with my friend Shuu, and we spent a few minutes both communing with and gawking at the large leathery behemoths rolling around in front of us. I shook hands with one – or, did my best when he (she?) offered a trunk to me in a friendly gesture.

A break for lunch

A guy with a bullhorn gathered the crowds under a covered area where elephants were chained by the feet to the floor: feeding time. The staff invite visitors to grab chunks of watermelon, bananas, and papaya from buckets and taught how to stand beside the animals, facing forward with them, and hold up the piece of fruit next to their mouths. If they don’t see it, you wave it around their eye.

Those big pink elephant tongues are pretty weird-looking, and I dropped my piece of watermelon at first, despite the guide reassuring us that our hands wouldn’t get bitten off. Easy for him to say; he’s standing off to the side, out of harm’s way, with a bullhorn.

On the shoulders of Dumbo

Everyone had their turn fattening up the sighing pachyderms and then we all went to a little wooden platform about 10 feet off the ground up a ladder: riding time!

You climb on the elephant’s back, hold on to the bored-looking guide who steers nature’s unwieldiest vehicle around a very small circle. In Thailand, the elephant tour involved about an hour on the beast’s back as he sauntered slowly through a grove of rubber trees, snapping off branches and crushing the undergrowth as he went. That was much more exciting than the thirty seconds we got at Kuala Gandah.

Back to Kuala Lumpur

Then it was time to go. Wet and covered in eau d’elephant, we changed back into our civilian clothes in the locker rooms provided and climbed into the van back to KL. It had been a sunny day but rained hard on the trip back to the city. Good timing; thanks travel gods!

It was quite an experience to spend so much time with the elephants at Kuala Gandah Sanctuary. It’s in a great setting and the elephants seem well-looked after. If you go to Malaysia, try to stop by.

I love that about loose, open-ended traveling: you never really know where fate will pull you, and it’s often to something unexpected and totally, crazily unique!

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