Friday morning began early with breakfast at Elephant Haven before heading down the mountain again. One of the projects Lek has spearheaded is tying blessed monk cloth around trees to help prevent deforestation. In Thai culture if someone cuts down a tree that has an orange cloth tied around it, they will receive bad luck in their life. We were each given a cloth and were told to find the tree we wanted to save.
Claire and Mindy joined forces to save a very large tree, with a girth too big for just one piece of cloth:
Here is the tree Ligeia chose:
Our hike down the mountain was nothing short of amazing!
Again, the trek was slow as the elephants took their time down the mountain. Jokia is blind in both eyes and it amazing to watch her navigate her footing with her trunk. The elephants also stopped along the way to grab a snack several times.
Ligeia found herself and 2 others sandwiched between Mae Perm and Jokia. It was fantastic to turn around at any given moment and see and elephant just behind you:
The afternoon included planting banana trees. Mindy unfortunately got stuck with the undesirable job of hauling these tree trunks out of the forest and loading them onto the tractor for planting. Ligeia thankfully saved one tree for Mindy to plant. Here is Carolyn and Ligeia getting to work:
The evening was spent relaxing and chatting over drinks:
Love,
Mindy and Ligeia :):)
Anonymous
You packed into one day what others would do in one week – amazing! The looks of everything you showed for far – just fascinating! And now you saved trees and made sure of future banana harvests. Great you could finally have a sitdown this evening. Looks like you were in good company even people wise.
Good night – love from Oma 🙂
Anonymous
Dear Team Poop,
Don't belittle the value of poop. An old friend of mine from India grew up in a one room shack in Kerala (south) and they used elephant poop as the flooring materials. Every so often they put a new layer of poop to refresh the floors. And cooking was done with pots and fire right on the floor. Anyhow you guys have a wonderful travel life style. – Allen