Elephant Dreaming

Karl Cullen first volunteered at The Elephant Nature Park, Thailand in 2002, spending four months with Hope and Ging Mai, two orphan calves who had recently been rescued at 18 months and 3 days old respectively. Fortunate enough to be offered a permanent position, Karl returned in 2003 and took on the role of mahout ( elephant handler and caregiver ) to an older bull elephant named Maximus – widely considered to be one of the the tallest elephants in Thailand.

In the time before his full time return in 2003, Ging Mai, at only nine months of age, had tragically passed away. Hope, who had most certainly come to view the younger Ging Mai as his little brother, moved to the larger part of the park where he was immediately embraced by the adult elephants there; most notably Mae Perm, Jokia and a little later, Mae Somboon, who doted on him as much as his lost mother.

Karl spent the next 5 years living in Max’s company, watching Hope grow amongst a growing herd of 30+ elephants at the park. During that time, after promising his 3 year old nephew Finn, that he would write him a book for his next birthday, he spent one sunny afternoon writing the story of Elephant Dreams, and the next two weeks putting illustrations to the story. Excited by the experience, he soon started on another story, continuing the adventures of Hope, which soon took on a life of its own and became the 282 page novel with the unwieldy title of Elephant Kingdom – The Search for the Giant Sun Throwing Elephant.

In 2008, Karl left the Elephant Nature Park to explore the wider world of elephants and took a position at Australia Zoo with the 3 resident elephants there. It was only 6 months later that he was contacted by Wildlife SOS in India who, with the help of the government there, were setting up a new elephant sanctuary modelled on Elephant Nature Park. Seeing another opportunity for adventure, Karl quickly accepted their proposal and landed in Delhi soon after. He spent the next 8 months there, experiencing the challenge of life in the most densely populated city in the world, working with the monkeys, dogs, horses, donkeys, cats, birds etc. at the WSOS Gurgaon sanctuary, seeing his first wild elephant in the jungles of Nepal and more again in the parks of Southern India, while all the time disagreements between WSOS and the state government escalated to the point that all agreed it was best to pull out of the project before they became involved in something none of us agreed with.

Sad to leave India and unsure of what was next, Karl returned to Australia. It was while waiting 7 months in Melbourne for a US visa to take a position at an elephant sanctuary across the Pacific that he finally got around to doing something more with the two books he had written. Finding an online self-publisher to his liking he set the books in to a format to his liking and they were soon available for sale online both with the publisher and at Amazon.com. Soon after, he put full page watercolour illustrations to a poem about elephants he had written some time earlier, and his third book, to be an Elephant, was born.

At the time of writing, Karl has passed on the opportunity to take work in the U.S. but is now poised to return to Elephant Nature Park to begin working with the 12 month old bull calf, Chang Yim. When possible he will post updates on all things related – and many things not!

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While in India, Karl had received notice that Max had taken ill, and was on the next flight to Thailand. He arrived that afternoon, and the next morning Max passed away. At that moment he decided

that the best way to honour Max’s life would be to write his story. That work is already underway and will hopefully appear here within the next 12 months. Until then, I hope you enjoy the 3 books on offer and the regular posts from amongst the elephants and dogs of Thailand

If you would like to know more, please feel free to contact Karl by email at kcullen75@gmail.com