Tiger Temple Part 6, The Largest Tigers

So we had an opportunity to pose with a four year old male tiger. The hands in this photo are because I decided to lean over. I wasn't going to touch his head, but they freaked (and rightly so). No matter how many times they gave us safety instructions I think my brain had melted with those baby tigers and I just wanted to cuddle 'em all.

So after our final posed photos they corralled us in with a rickety chain link fence and the crazy tiger man pictured above exercised the tigers. He yelled at them. He rode them. He chased them. He hung boxes over their heads to get them to jump. One tiger would jump off the rock structure in the middle of the water area down into the water. Sometimes the volunteers also wedged a stick with a dangling "toy" on the top of the mushroom structure. One tiger jumped up, grabbed at the toy, but it didn't budge. He ended up falling and smacking the packed dirt--on his side. It was loud and looked painful.

When the crazy tiger guy declared exercise time over the tigers ran out of the area and were led away.

We endured the blazing sun to walk along the sky path to see more tigers. They have 128 tigers in all. We did not see the 2 lions they have. They also now have two rescue baby moon bears. They have a lot of hoofstock and an aviary on the property as well. We heard the tigers roaring. That seemed to trigger the peacocks. We made our way back toward the exit and found Jackie. He loaded us up and took us on our next adventure.