Chiang Mai has a wonderful old town, but for me, I will always think of it as my heartwarming elephant experience. Sadly, the industry for elephant trekking in Thailand is huge for tourism and is fully supported by the government. I won’t get up on my soap box too much ... but I will say that if you are a traveler, please don’t go on an elephant ride or buy paintings completed by the next Michelangelo elephant because the practices that go behind these tourist attractions are just horrific. I had researched elephant sanctuaries in Thailand and across everything I had read, the Elephant Nature Park was consistently listed as one of the best regarding both the ethical treatment of the elephants and visitor interaction, so that’s where I wanted to go.
As usual, I didn’t plan ahead, and by the time I went to book a visit to the park, the basic visits were sold out. However, I saw they had a "Walking with Pachaderms" full-day experience available ... for a little bit more of course. This experience was interesting because it involved the Elephant Nature Park, but the park was also partnering with a new elephant owner who was transitioning her elephant property to a sanctuary. The owner had a handful of elephants and each elephant still had its handler. After we arrived, we cut up giant basketfuls of watermelons (maybe 75 in total) and fed the chunks to each elephant. There was also some squash mixed in, but like children, they picked those out and dropped them to the floor, refusing to eat them. I don’t blame them - watermelon is much tastier than squash.
After the initial feeding, we started walking the elephants to the nature reserve. There were two or three individuals per elephant, and each of us carried a sack loaded with bananas. It’s almost a giddy feeling to watch the elephants, each with its own distinct personality, and see their group camaraderie - if one of the elephants was scared, the other elephants would come around to comfort him/her. My elephant (pronounced Ban-yun) preferred taking two bananas at a time - my kind of efficiency! She would extend her trunk to you so you could put the bananas in the curve of her trunk toward the very end, and then she would curl up the trunk to bring the bananas to her mouth. If you weren’t ready with more bananas, she would come looking for them anyway, using her trunk to explore where the bananas might be on you. Mischievous but smart! The trunk was so agile, like the movement of a slinky but filled with much strength. The texture was soft but very dry with long hairs. On the return trip, we were able to bathe the elephants in a stream we were crossing. Conveniently, we had more backup watermelons to keep the elephants occupied while we filled up beach-sized buckets with the stream water to douse and splash the elephants with. I figure the human equivalent is eating strawberries in a bubble bath - not a bad gig, right?
I’ve been on an African safari before and seen elephants up close in their natural habitat, but this was different as the elephants can never be put back into the wild due to their domestication. All you can aim to do is give these elephants a safe environment and bring back happiness so that they can live out the rest of their lives free from the misery they so long endured.
