The Land of a Million Elephants
The Kingdom of Lan Xang, which translates to the land of a million elephants is today called Laos.
Laos is a landlocked country in South East Asia. Covered by forests and mountains it is one of the poorest nations on earth and one of the few remaining one-party communist states.
At one time there were a million elephants in Laos, but today mostly due to human incursion that has been reduced to less than one thousand.
While there, we visited an elephant sanctuary where we were allowed to ride the elephants, feed them and bathe them. My elephant was named Betty, and Betty was a hungry gal. The mahout gave me bananas and sugar cane to feed her as I rode on her back. She would leave her trunk up insisting on more, until she felt she had enough.
We were able to ride through the jungle for over an hour until we reached the Mekong river where we bathed the elephants.
