Posts

Thailand: Living with elephants

Image
My entire Asia itinerary was built around one thing: elephants. I’ve been following the work of Thailand’s Sangduen “Lek” Chailert for two decades and have sponsored four rescues. Lek is a revolutionary in both conservation and humanitarianism, laying her life on the line to end elephant cruelty in tourism and logging, while also championing opportunities and rights for Burmese refugee mahouts (who make up most of the workforce at her rescue park). Spending a week in the mountains of northern Thailand on the Living with Elephants programme (120 eles plus 200 dogs and 2,000 cats) has been both heart-warming and harrowing. Our contribution as volunteers is realistically mainly financial and awareness-raising, hence writing about it here. That said,  we did shovel a lot of sh*t!  The back story as to why elephants have ended up at the sanctuary is one of unimaginable abuse hidden behind tourism propaganda. And it needs to be told. People (as I did) tend to assume that Thailand's ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kerala: Easing Back into India

Image
A month ago, the prospect of resuming my travels after dad's sudden stroke was not even on the cards. After just 36 hours in the Maldives, I'd jumped on the first flight to the Canary Islands, sharing shifts at his bedside as he fought sepsis, pneumonia and critical brain damage. But he's defied all prognoses and, with walking deep in his blood, is taking steps - quite literally - back to his beloved Brownrigg Farm.  So, on the family's insistence, I made the trip back East from Arrecife to Kochi (triple-offsetting my carbon footprint even though I know that's still nowhere near enough) .  The God of Small Things depicts 1960s Keralans as living turbulent lives against a sleepy backdrop of spice-filled backwaters, wild Arabian surf and furtive tigers. Today, as a communist thorn in Modhi’s side, this sickle flag-flying state is holding firm as India moves ever Trump-wards. Kochi's famous chinese fishing nets This section of my itinerary was always going to be ...
Post a Comment
Read more