Elephant clean up

Hi all this action of cleaning up a working elephant took place in Kaziranga NP in Assam / India .
The elephants are used by the forest guards for patrolling inside the NP , to look for poachers and other not very nice people . They also have to work in other cases inside the park , like moving timber etc .
The forest guards live in the forest for the time they are on duty , normally a month period before they return home for a week . They live a hard live there with no electricity and other civilization stuff , only men do the jobs and they do stay there with 4 men in a simple elevated concrete house .
No running water , just a manual pump that pumps bore water to the surface .But these guys seemed to be happy as far as i could tell , as i got the chance to talk to them cause our guide translated for us .

Was a good experience to see that , but to be honest i could not live that way .....even if i love nature ..... i think i am poisoned by civilization :e3.

Cheers Andreas

A fun photo. The elephant seems to enjoy it --"just a little more to the left" backrub kind of pose. Yes, they guys seem to be enjoying it, too, despite the month long assignment with no family. Thanks for sharing

First of all, the image tells a great story. But thank you so much for educating us on how they are living out there and how the elephants are used. It's truly interesting.

That's a great image! I love the perspective that allows me to see the relative sizes of the men and the elephant. It must require a large amount of trust to be up there!

Andreas:

Entertaining image, educational story, thanks so much for sharing! Often the story behind the image is as important as the image itself.

Cheers

Randy

Quite the telling photograph, you can tell they like what they do...no poisoning by civilization for them (or at least not how we all know it). Thanks for posting the image!