Niche Travel

SOME OF US are cat people. Some of us are dog people. If by some chance you’re more of an elephant person, boy have we the hotel for you.

Elephant Safari Park Lodge in Bali offers guests a unique opportunity to holiday in a luxury hotel, while at the same time grooming, washing, watching and enjoying the elephants that wander freely around its grounds. The hotel has its own herd of 29 Sumatran elephants. Guests heading out from their lodge-style bedroom of a morning are picked up by a chauffeur driven elephant for a safari ride to the restaurant.

Once there you have your breakfast on a terrace which overlooks the rest of the herd undertaking their morning ablutions, lazily meandering over to a nearby lake for their daily bathing ritual. If you fancy it, you can pick up a yard brush and help scrub them down.

Other than that you spend your days enjoying elephant treks through the forest or watching one of the thrice-daily shows put on by the hotel’s specially trained elephant troupe.

You also get full access to the baby elephant nursery where you can help out with the little ones to your heart’s content. Of course there’s is all the usual posh hotel palaver, including gyms and spas, but who could tear themselves away from that nursery?

There’s an elephant-shaped pool (for the humans), a souvenir shop filled with elephant knick-knacks and a museum and gallery devoted to pachyderms.

There’s even not just elephant-inspired art, but elephant-created art – they hold paintbrushes with their trunk. Okay, maybe there is such a thing as too much elephant.

[ elephantsafariparklodge.com ]