A Touching Day In Elephant Rehab

Despite what some people say Facebook still has its uses and we discovered a fantastic organisation based near Chiang Mai through our good friend Chris. Elephant Nature Park was founded by Sangduen “Lek" Chailert in 2003, its a unique sanctuary and rehabilitation centre where abused elephants rescued from the tourism industry or logging trade, can live in like the wild elephants they were meant to be. We felt compelled to visit and show our support to this inspiring woman who has been rescuing elephants since 1993 and meet the rehabiliated elephants, bracing ourselves for some heartbreaking truths.

The park is situated almost two hours outside of Chiang Mai and during our journey we were shown a video exposing Thailand's mistreatment of elephants for tourism and giving us an introduction to Lek’s mission and a few of her elephants that she had rescued. The elephant’s background stories were unbelievably cruel. One blind female elephant had been rescued from the logging trade on the Thai/Burmese border. This poor elephant had been made to work whilst heavily pregnant and lost her baby, she fell into depression and refused to work so in a bid to get her to move her mahout used a sling shot to blind her eye, it didn't work so he blinded her other eye too. Now this elephant is living a much pleasanter life at the Elephant Nature Park and she is the first of many elephants Len has rescued. 

As we got closer to Elephant Nature Park we were surprised to pass by many elephant tourist camps and grinning tourists riding on the back of the elephants. Later that day we learnt that some of the elephants rescued had been from these very tourist camps. If only these tourists understood how the elephants had been trained so that they could ride them. Every domesticated elephant goes through a barbaric 'crushing’ process, they are beaten often within an inch of their lives to demoralise them and lose their ‘wild’ instincts so that they can be trained by their aggressive mahout. Please watch this short documentary called Crushed for the full story.

"Putting the facilities to good use and scratching that itch!"

Once we were inside the park it was refreshing to see so many elephants roaming free amongst acres of green land, dogs and people. We couldn't wait to get out of the van and join everyone. First we were taken up to the wooden main house/viewing platform and gawped open mouthed at the elephants who would come right up to platform sniffing with their trunks for food! There were also lots of dogs on the platform with us and down on the ground with the elephants - we'd never seen anything like it. We were impressed to learn that their is also an animal shelter for dogs within the park.

"#Photobomb!"

We were part of a group of ten with one guide, once seated comfortably we given our safety briefing which basically advised us not to stand behind the elephants and not to tease them with food, most of the elephants are very friendly and they are always with their mahout who will let our guide know if we can get close to them or not. The mahouts in Elephant Nature Park use a positive training method where they reward the elephant for good behaviour rather than punish them for bad behaviour.

"What a beautiful smile!"

Our first interaction with the elephants was to feed them their favourite snack fresh fruit. Elephants love fruit like we love chocolate or cheese, and like all the best foods too much makes them fat! As a visitor to the park you get to feed them their favourite vice by hand which is entertaining for us and enjoyable for them, we mostly fed them watermelon, bananas and pumpkin. Their trunks are fascinating to watch in action, they literally suck the fruit from your hand and curl it into their mouth, if the fruits dirty they will give it a few swipes to clean it. 

"Stop faffing Steve and feed me faster!"

Elephants eat at lightning speed so we had to feed them very quickly, they can get pretty impatient too and won’t hesitate to nudge you out the way with their trunk if you're in the way of the fruit basket! Once your halfway through the basket they get a bit slobbery with all the fruit juice so you get very sticky hands.

All the fruit and vegetables have to washed by the park volunteers to remove any pesticides before the elephants can eat it - only bananas don't need to be washed as Thailand always grows these organically. There are over 30 elephants at the park and between them they eat 3.5 tonnes of food per day so you can imagine the prep time this takes not to mention the cost. Each elephants eats 10% of its body weight a day too!

When we ran out of fruity treats we headed for a tour of the park on foot to meet some of the elephants and learn more about them. Each elephant has its own name, own personality and own story. Their stories are not easy to hear as they have experienced much pain and suffering from humans. 

In the first pair of elephants we encountered one was blind in one eye and the other had had its back foot blown of by a landmine near the Thai / Burmese border, since their arrival at the park they had struck up a great friendship and were always together - it was very sweet to witness.

We also met a female elephant with a broken hip, she had been chained to a male elephant to forcefully mate but the male crushed her, when Lek heard about it she rescued her and brought to the park. Now she is happy and has two buddies to hang out with at the park, we saw them all later that afternoon crossing the river, the other two were up ahead but didn't go too far until they stopped to wait patiently for their friend. 

Many elephants have created their own friendship groups within the park’s herd, usually in twos or threes, if one is blind their friend will lead them around and always be by their side - unless it dinnertime then its all about the food! Others are more solitary and prefer their own company, we met one who's friend had recently died and was now choosing to be alone. Nothing is forced here the elephants are free to do what they want and interact with each other when and if they want to. 

After a fascinating morning with our friendly and knowledgable guide we went back to the house/viewing platform for a delicious vegetarian lunch. Our afternoon activity was bathing the elephants in the river and we were eager to get started. As it was January when we visited it was winter by Thailand's standard so the water was a bit cold and the elephants were a bit reluctant to go in and didn’t want to stay in for long - however, nothing a basket if watermelon won't change. 

Together with our group we bathed two elephants who seemed very content although we hard to be careful not to throw water at the blind side of ones face.

The river was shallow at about 50cm where we stood so there was no need for swimwear, we could just roll our trousers up, we each had a bucket to scoop and throw water over the elephants - it was really good fun and the river was full of other elephants and tour groups enjoying bath time too.

After bath-time we met the family herd which included a five year old and a ten month old, both were pretty cheeky especially the baby who was running hoops around its mahout and was very curious about the tourists who he wanted to run up to, as he already weighed 800kg we decided against any kind of playtime and kept out his boisterous path.

The only elephants under any kind of restraints were two of the male elephants who were on heat during our visit so they were tethered by a long chain to a tree so that they couldn't fight each other or cause havoc - the females can of course go to them if they get the urge.  There is a huge new section being built in the park that will contain a private quarter for each male to entertain and woo the ladies in whilst he's on heat. This un-intrusive method of breeding seems to work well as there have been four new additions to the herd since the park began.

Some elephants are on a special diet for health reasons (i.e. stomach ulcer, missing teeth) and some had to have their bananas peeled for them. The last elephant we met was 83 years old, she liked to hangout with her mahout and had to have her fruit peeled as she only had one tooth left, bless her! She was still a very fast eater though and virtually inhaled the basket of watermelon we fed to her!

We were very touched by our day at Elephant Nature Park, we met so many wonderful elephants and witnessed the amazing work that Lek and her team are doing. It was a real eye-opening experience in to how Thailand's elephants have been and still are being exploited for tourism by greed and tourists that are unaware of the conditions and plight they endure. Just three days before our visit an elephant had been rescued for a tourist camp down the road it was underweight and its skin was covered in mosquito bites, the poor thing hadn't had a bath in years so had no relief from the pain.

"Three ladies enjoying an afternoon stroll along the riverbank."

Until this visit to Thailand we didn't understand the true extent of elephant exploitation. There really is no need for anybody to 'ride an elephant' and elephants that are made to perform tricks are in a living hell. 

"Another happy face!"

We are ashamed to admit that we went on an elephant ride in Thailand's Khao Sok jungle almost four years ago and although we were concerned that the elephant was happy we had never heard of the ‘crushing’ process and didn't know that elephants are not designed to carry heavy loads. A fully grown adult can carry up to 150Kg so when you consider the weight of two people and the Howdah that weighs over 100KG plus a mahout on the neck - its a very heavy burden for an elephant to carry. It wasn't particularly thrilling experience, the best bit was petting and feeding the elephant, we would never do it again and the more that we have travelled since over the past few years the more we ask questions and research in to each experience we think we want to try. 

A day at Elephant Nature Park is quite an expensive excursion at 5,000 Baht (about £50) per person but every Baht goes to looking after the animals at the sanitary both elephants and dogs. Donations help to buy food, medicine, land and build new facilities. 

It's not easy getting a place on the visits we had to wait six days to get on a group tour and even then we got the last spot so make sure you book ahead, if you are booking over five days in advance you can book online.

Since our visit we discovered that a group of travel bloggers have banded together to support the Save Elephant Foundation in 2014 including one of favourites Travel Freak. They have made it their mission to raise awareness about responsible tourism and encourage donations to ENP.  Visit the Travel Blogging Calendar and you could win a holiday to Thailand when you make your donation. Or, if for some crazy reason you don't want a holiday to Thailand you can donate directly to the Save The Elephant Foundation. 

"Don't turn your back - help the elephants!"