Elephant and Deer Park in Kuala Gandah

We love animals and really care about the environment so when we heard about an elephant sanctuary saving Elephant, we were really excited! We are talking about the Kaula Gandah Elephant conservation center. The center is located 2 hours away from Kuala Lumpur. Closer to the park, we started seeing a few animals like several monkeys or even a 1.5m snake (that I took initially for a branch).

First warning, make sure that you look at their website first because some of the activities are at certain times of the day. The hike was at 11AM but we arrived at noon unfortunately. First you get to see a video for an hour. You think that they are saving elephants but you find out that they are actually helping companies that have destroyed rain forest to cultivate palm oil (very unhealthy and responsible for cardiovascular diseases). These companies after having reduced their habitat to almost nothing, are complaining that the elephants are destroying their fields. So they are calling the center to capture them and transfer them. Obviously, the elephants are extremely stressed when having to be chained for several days and moved far from their natural habitat. Furthermore, we discover that the sanctuary was actually created by a governmental institution: the Malaysian Department of Wildlife and National Parks. We left the room before the end, it was too depressing. Next, we want to explore the entire park and discover that apart from watching the elephants eating and taking a bath, there is not much to do. We went to see the elephants in their pen, they did not seem to be happy. Then a hundred tourists appeared and started yelling and playing with the elephants… I was expecting a wild park where we would see elephants in the wild and we discovered a zoo with the elephants being used to please the audience and do tricks with probably more cement than trees around us. We were extremely disappointed to say the least.

Fortunately, we saw another park on our way there, the deer park. The name is misleading because you will see a lot more than just deer. After the masses of the elephant park, we were relieved to be the only ones there. This was still similar to a zoo with fences around the animals but a lot greener with a lot of trees. We felt like we were in a manicured jungle which was quite pleasant. We got startled when a giant lizard got attached the Bengal cats in their pen. The staff was really friendly and we were able to ask a lot of questions.

You can feed the deer or an ostrich. We were also able to handle a boa constrictor which was definitely a first for us (don’t try that on a wild one please!). We also saw adorable hedgehogs and touched quantities of impressive lizards among other things. We really enjoyed this park and definitely recommend it.

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