Elephant at Ban Khiet Ngong - Champasak, Laos
Elephant at Ban Khiet Ngong - Champasak, Laos
An elephant in the wetlands around Ban Khiet Ngong, Champasak Province, Laos.
(By Stanislas Fradelizi)
www.champasak-hotels.com
Taken on: 8th November, 2007. Copyright: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License - See whl.travel's page of Flickr
Read more about Ban Khiet Ngong
The quaint, out-of-the-way village of Ban Khiet Ngong is a good example of how the Lao Government is trying to develop a smooth-running, ecologically friendly tourist infrastructure that brings much-needed income to increasingly remote regions of Laos without impacting negatively on the traditional life-ways of the locals.
As you enter the village, you'll see the elephant platform on the left, which makes it possible to get on and off the mammoth beasts, and the one 'tourist friendly' place is stay is well-removed from the village. There are no signs of the hawking and pandering among locals that tends to rise up when cash-laden tourists show up in relatively impoverished places.
A visit here is recommended, not only for the beauty of the landscape and novelty of the elephant treks, but also to support the future of such low-impact development in Laos.
Ban Khiet Ngong is part of the Xe Pian National Protected Area, 24,000 square kilometres of ... Read our complete Ban Khiet Ngong travel guide
