Hi, David. I had worked for the IFAW Xishuangbanna elephant program for one and a half year when I conducted my master research there. The wild Asian elephants in Ye-xiang-gu (Wild Elephant Valley) are quite easy to see from June to October. However, the most organized trips there only allow tourists to stay in the Wild Elephant Valley for several hours, and it is impossible to see any wildlife if you only stay in the forest for half a day. If you want to see the wild elephants, you should plan at least three days in the park. The park has tree-top lodges and canopy walkways just next to a pond, which is favored by the elephants because there is lots of salt at the bottem of the pond, and you can see more than 20 elephants aggragrated at the pond if lucky enough. However, most of my elephant sightings were not inside the park, but were at the road next to the park~~The Kunming-Bangkok Highway cut the Reserve into two parts, thus the elephants have to cross the road regularly, and sometimes destroy some cars~~ There are about 250 elephants roam inside the reserve, but the Wild Elephant Valley park itself may not be the national park you had imagined~~ Unlike the national park in Nepol, Thailand or Malaysia, the Wild Elephant Valley is more like a nature park than national park; they have tamed elephants to perform, and have a small zoo to display local animals, mainly reptiles and birds. There are free-ranging northern white-cheeked gibbons and Phayre's langur inside the park, but they are raised by humans and are not real wild animals. Even more, sometimes the park rangers will feed the wild elephants to attract them to the salt pond. Because there are so many dangerous elephants around, tourists are not allowed to left assigned routes. The other animals can be seen in this area include red muntjac, wild boar, sambar, macaque, palm civet, ferret badger, water monitor, and so on, but they are all very hard to see. Most times I can only catch a glimpse of them. Finally, it is indeed a good place to see wild Asian elephants, and the possibility to see wild elephants there is very high if you stay there for three days in the rain season. Meanwhile, the road outside the park is a good place for bird-watchers, large flocks of Asian fair bluebirds, Scarlet Minivets, blue-winged leafbirds and several kinds of barbets are quite easy to see, as well as long-tailed and silver breasted broadbills, Greater Racket-tailed Drongo, Green-billed Malkoha, Rufous-bellied Niltava, White-rumped Shama and so on.
