Part I: Rage Against the Monsoon

Last night, I sent Katie and Jake a group photo I took of them with Typhoon and the social media manager, Som. They loved it so much, it apparently became the phone wallpaper for a couple of them. This solidified our social media friendship, and prompted Katie to ask for a mini photoshoot before our departure. They lack marketing material from their six-month journey, and this felt like a small, meaningful way to contribute to their conservation book project.


The morning schedule was dedicated to touring the sanctuary's new satellite park. The current 250-acre footprint is simply too small to sustain the rapidly growing population. The animals are strategically divided: females, calves, and those with severe psychological, visual, or hearing impairments stay on the visitor side, while the males live across the river to prevent breeding. This layout meant I could not reunite with Navaan, the mischievous calf who shredded my backpack thirteen years ago, as he is now a puberty-stricken teenager housed in a restricted area.


The expansion is a direct response to the catastrophic 2024 flash flooding that completely devastated the park. ENP faced rather intense criticism for being unprepared when flash floods (despite being unprecedented) forced a chaotic evacuation of nearly every animal. The tragic event ultimately claimed the lives of two elephants. To prevent another disaster, they are working under a rapidly approaching deadline to build a massive drainage system which inconveniently leads directly to the male enclosures. However, this has forced their hand on acquiring new land and constructing a different experience :


  • Skywalk: Elevated viewing platforms for tourist observation - all above ground level with no physical contact, but allowing for deeper and more self guided experiences.
  • Timeline: All structural construction to be completed and ~50 elephants safely migrated within the next three months.


Part II: Sanctuary in the Cat Shelter


To my immense relief, Katie pushed our morning meeting back from 7:00 AM to 8:30 AM. The extra time allowed me to slow down, actually enjoy my coffee, and mentally map out the framing for our shoot. When we finally crossed paths around 9:00 AM, she apologized profusely, admitting that she had been privately drowning in severe sleep deprivation and mental health struggles.


Holding back my instinct to match her confession with my own, I simply offered to be a silent sounding board. She accepted instantly, asking to go somewhere more private (the half day visitors were beginning to arrive). Because we had no official chaperone and red carpet into the fields today, we walked across the property to one of the three main cat rescue shelters. The enclosure is a large, partially covered sanctuary of its own where hundreds of rescued cats climb, sleep, and roam around a few wooden structures.


On Tuesday, a very specific orange-and-white cat (photo below) had taken a distinct liking to me, burying itself in my lap and trailing me all the way to the exit gate. The moment Katie and I sat down on a bench today, mere seconds passed before we were reunited. She leaped straight into my lap, stared directly into my eyes as if demanding to know where I had been, and curled up for head scratches. Damn, I wept.


Part III: Hostel Talk

Sitting around a round, green wooden table, blanketed in fur, we unearthed an uncanny list of shared realities, including parallel battles with insomnia, high-functioning anxiety, and the identical mental defense mechanisms we’ve both constructed to combat them. She has an exceptionally troubled and traumatizing past, but climbed out of it with some help. We shared the exact same passion for wildlife preservation (though, she’s making it a career), and even matching minimalist wedding philosophies. When she described her dream ceremony as an intimate, small gathering surrounded by animals, I laughed and pulled up photos of me and Kate standing in a field of llamas and lying flat on glacial ice.


I don’t think “hostel-talk” is an officially coined term by any generation, but it’s what I call the conversations one has with other travelers - specifically, when plans are made, ideas are shared, or commitments are locked in - even though you know (despite best efforts to convince yourself and your new bestie) it most likely won’t actually happen.


So, while this might just be the case, she was so taken by my photographic perspective that she said she’d love to have me shoot her and Jake's wedding in a couple years. It felt incredibly validating to connect deeply with someone who truly understood the weight of navigating a world that others might not experience the same way. I opened up about my own physiological burnout symptoms and the frustrating diagnostics that led me to my frontal lobe.


Jarryd, my new therapist, has been an incredible find. But, for having missed the last 2 weeks due to travel and poor WiFi, these two hours more than made up the difference. In terms of creative output, zero photos taken. Jake dodged the camera entirely, and instead of shutter clicks, we shared mutual tears, coping strategies, and trust.


By 11:00 AM, we finally snapped out of the conversation. I managed to capture a few quick, candid frames of her surrounded by the cats before we broke for the lunch buffet.


Part IV: An Early Exit to Bangkok

Jake had stayed behind during our session to handle the logistics of their travel schedule. After half a year on the road across Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, the grinding pace had broken their sleep cycles, leaving Katie averaging 3-4 hours of rest per night, a brutal reality I can empathize with. They finally felt ready to pull the plug and head back to the grid in Chiang Mai. What perfect timing.


With exactly three open seats in the afternoon staff van, he locked those in for us to hitch a free ride back to the city a day early. Normally, volunteers stay until Sunday afternoon, but that timeline left me trapped me in transit to my Bangkok hotel until midnight, effectively killing my Sunday (short of an $80 fee for a private taxi). Making the early jump allowed me to change my flight to Bangkok for a fraction of that, giving me a full, unstructured Sunday afternoon to catch up with Jeff as he is still wrapping up his school semester.


Right before the van departed, Lek walked the volunteers out for one final farewell. She specifically brought over Faa Mai, the matriarch elephant from my original 2013 trip, just for me. Despite the strict present-day no-touch policy, Lek smiled and told me it was perfectly fine to place my hand on her. She gave me one clear warning to stay away from the trunk, reminding me of Faa Mai’s habit of wrapping her trunk around people to pull them along, which is exactly what she did to me over a decade ago.


She certainly attempted again, which I had to dodge. But, that brief moment - and the resulting permanent mud stain on my shirt - was the ultimate full-circle souvenir of this trip. I am leaving for Chiang Mai entirely fulfilled, indescribably eager for a room with functioning climate control, clean laundry, and a bed free of mosquito netting.


I’m speechless. I’ve stopped editing my life narrative for public consumption, and am enjoying the freedom of sitting in the mud, letting an animal or two claim my lap, and stating my exhaustion out loud to a stranger who looks me in the eye and tells me they carry the exact same weight. I’m excited for the next 3 weeks.