The elephant orphanage in Nairobi

Being tired of all the adventures, I wanted to take a day off to rest and relax. But not with my dear Barbara, who is much more resilient than me 🙂 She planned to go to the elephant orphanage in Nairobi. There you can watch young elephants being fed and taking their mud baths. At first I was skeptical because I don’t want to support facilities which keep animals just for our fun, but in the end I had the impression that they take more value in the elephants’ interests.

Elias knows how to behave in front of the camera by this time 😉

When we arrived, we soon realized that this is probably the most touristic spot we’ve been so far in Kenya. Many people walked into the area, in which soon also the elephants walked in towards their caretakers. They have a lot of space and their freedom and are just in the small field during the feeding. As the elephants drank their milk and rolled in the mud, one of the keepers explained to us that they are rescued babies and also told us every elephant’s name and its background story. They lost their parents and some of them still have serious injuries. He emphasized that you should not buy stuff from ivory. Apparently this is the reason why some of these little guys are here. Who would’ve thought that you have to tell this to people in 2017…

This little guy on the right had an injury at his trunk. He lost a lot of water when he tried to drink…

Sometimes the keepers had to help out with the bath…

This man knows his gear 😉

The first batch grudgingly left the feeding for the older ones.
And here they come 🙂

I think Barbara already updated her friends and family… I want my blog posts to be thrilling, so they are already a week late 😉
Let’s use the time for a spontaneous portrait of my favourite travel companion 🙂
I wonder how that selfie turned out.

That’s where our little trip to the elephant orphanage ended. As always: thank you for reading my posts and motivating me to do more 🙂 I am also very interested in your thoughts about facilities like this one. Have you ever visited a similar one (except from Tiergarten Schönbrunn or other zoos) and which impressions have you had?

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