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Elephant Rescues and Arrivals - Mimi

Mimi, a rescued Thai elephant enjoys freedom of open spaces at the park

Bringing Mimi Home One Elephant's Walk to Freedom by Katherine Holden

Following Katherine with her trunk Mimi shows her delight at her new fortune.

Nine people gathered to walk Mimi to the Elephant Nature Park.  We were four volunteers, three staff and two new mahouts.  To reach Mimi, we drove for two hours through the mountains over a winding dirt road.  At a Karen village, we bought a bamboo raft and floated down the Maetang River for an hour to the remote trekking camp where Mimi has lived and suffered.

At 9:00 the next morning we began the long walk home.  Pom, Lek's right-hand assistant, knew a one-day "short cut."  For the first time in countless years, Mimi walked without a mahout beating her, without being rushed, without being forced to carry tourists hour after hour up and down steep trails.

We started along the river where one mahout gave Mimi a delicious scrubbing.  We forded the river about five times.  After the river, we headed straight uphill, slowly, slowly, for Mimi, free from abuse and undernourished, paused frequently to eat and eat and eat.  Imagine one step forward then five bites of forest brush.  It took Mimi until 3:30 to climb up and down the steep mountain.

Once down, she enjoyed the two banana trees Katherine bought her. She especially savored the banana trunks.  She dawdled for so long with them that the mahouts finally had to tease her forward with chunks of trunks in hand.  Much laughter and goodwill embraced Mimi--never a harsh word or action.  The total walk covered about 32 kilometers.  By 6:30 p.m., with night closing in, we still had 12 kilometers to go.  Since the mahouts considered resting with Mimi for the night, the rest of us returned to the Park.

Early the next morning, what a surprise to find Mimi and the mahouts in the Park! They'd continued on--slowly slowly--bringing Mimi in by midnight. She'd had a 15-hour trek, eating her way home.  Now she's resting, eating, receiving medical attention and learning how to live in her new compassionate world.