Authorities reopened a major elephant park in Ayutthaya, hoping to show tourists the country is beginning to return to normal following historic floods that have left more than 550 people dead nationwide.
The pachyderms from the Ayutthaya Elephant Palace stood and sat with their mahouts — their handlers — through a prayer ceremony asking for blessings as the park opened for the first time since it was swamped in September.
The palace is famous for offering tourists elephant rides through the ancient temple ruins that dot the city, a UNESCO World Heritage site 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Bangkok. Experts fear that at least half of the more than 200 waterlogged monasteries, fortresses and other monuments in the one-time royal capital have been damaged by Thailand’s worst floods in more than half a century.
Still, authorities hope the reopening of the elephant park will start drawing visitors back.
The camp was forced to close when the city began to flood, and 98 elephants were stranded on a small space of dry land where they lived on donated fruit and vegetables.
The floods have affected more than a third of the country’s provinces and killed 562 people nationwide since they began swamping the central heartland in late July.