Elephants and Mountains - Northern Laos

I am so glad that we put this country on our itinerary - it has been a wonderful surprise!! We split our time in Luang Prabang by a two day/night stay at a mountain villa about 25 km north of the town. It took us about 45 minutes to get to the villa. Owned by a German couple, they have five bungalows nestled into the hills and on the banks of the Khan River.

This little place was kept a secret from the kids. I knew that riding elephants was going to produce some excitement so we told them only a couple days before we went up into the hills. The villa resort was beautiful - a nice bungalow overlooking the river....there was only one other couple there (from Germany) and so we had the place (and the staff) to ourselves. The food was great - all home cooked Lao food (fantastic Laap Muu!) and of course Beer Lao to wash it down.

As soon as we arrived, the kids wanted to hike to see the elephants so we hiked through the forest/jungle to the camp (even passing the "Dangerous, Do Not Enter, Free Roaming Elephants" sign...nothing was stopping this pilgrimage!).

The Elephant Camp is located next door to Lao Spirit Resort (http://www.lao-spirit.com/). There are a few of these elephant places popping up and it is very important for these animals. Laos only has about 1200 elephants remaining and of course, they are on the endangered species list. Of these 1200, just over 500 are domesticated and used in the forestry industry. They are talking about phasing them out of the industry which means you have 500 unemployed domesticated elephants that cannot be sent back into the wild. They have been testing this unsuccessfully in Thailand with little success.




The elephants live with their "mahout" - completely dedicated elephant caretakers who stay with these elephants for most if not all of their lives. While we went for the visit on Day One, it was the morning of our second day that we had scheduled for the elephant bathing, rides and feeding. It was an amazing experience. We had two elephants - (all the elephants at this camp are female) - both were 61 years old!! Mae Cot was looked after by myself and Madeline and Mae Boun Nam was looked after by Kristen, Joshua and Erica. We had an hour of riding and then fed them to wrap up the approx. 2.5 hours we spent with them....the kids are still talking about this time!




Later that day, we took a boat down the river to the Tad Sae Waterfalls. Being that it is the rainy season, the falls and rockpools were huge!! The kids swam and jumped off the falls for 4 hours that afternoon...you can imagine how tired they were by the end of this day!! The water was quite cold given that it comes from high in the mountains but it was lots of fun to explore and relax in the heat of the day.

During the long trip planning process, I had high hopes for this visit to the mountains of Northern Laos. I spent time speaking with the owners of the villas, making sure the elephants and their mahouts would be open to having kids around (most elephant camps will not take kids younger than 12 - 15 years). It was an absolutely brilliant couple of days - something that we will remember for a long long time!!