After breakfast at JUMBO GUESTHOUSE a 4 wheel drive car is going to pick us up around 8:30 in the morning. After two hours drive over bumpy and dirt roads we reach the Khmu village, where we are going to stay overnight.

A local guide is going with us to one of three elephant camps that are located around the Khmu village.

Either you wait at the elephant camp or when you are well trained you follow the local guide to search for the elephants who works in the nearby jungle, to tell the mahouts that we come to see them how they wok with the elephants. The walk with the local guide can be slippery and steep.  (We don’t have the possibility to call them in advance, therefore the local guide has to search for them, and it can take a while).

We have lunch at the camp with the mahouts.

After lunch we see how the mahouts works with the elephants;  how they bring the logs down the steep slopes,  pull with there heads the logs into the right position and floating tree trunks on the streams behind them. We follow them along the stream back to the Khmu village. On the way, you can see how the elephants are going to take a bath.

The mahout brings the elephants into the jungle, where they stay overnight.

Our English speaking tour guide comes from this village. He likes to show you around and answer your several questions about village life, mahout’s work and so on …

In the evening the villagers are going to make a “Bacci Ceremony” to welcome you into there village. After dinner you can try their self made alcohol before you go to bed. Nonlapfandee – sleep and dream well….

The accommodation is very basic, no hot water to take a shower and the toilets is sometimes quite challenging – instead of these, everything is authentic.

On the next day you can walk around in the village and see how busy all villagers already are in the early morning. Meanwhile they prepare your breakfast.

After breakfast we drive to Ban Thanoun, and show you a village at the Mekong river bench, before you either get on the slow boat to Luang Prabang around 12 o’clock or you drive back with the car to Hongsa.