Thailand Day 8: Elephants!

My car arrived at 8am, I had had far too little sleep. And of course for some reason I was lucky number one on the pick up route. I had grabbed some of the things I would need and left my bag with the group of people I had just met and went out with that night. The hostel had no bag holding service, so I trusted some strangers not to sell my stuff. I was working on two hours of sleep and was hoping for the best. 

We proceeded to pick up some other people, a couple from Christchurch New Zealand, a couple from Seattle, and a girl from Calgary. We drove about and hour, hour and a half north of the city to Elephant Nature Park which is where I would be staying overnight and spending two full days with elephants. This park came highly recommend, because unlike other "Elephant Parks" in the area this was a place built to rescue abused animals and help to boost the elephant population. Many of the others are simply created as a tourist attraction where the elephants are often mistreated and overcrowded. ENP was a sanctuary first and brought in tourist to help finance the organization. You can find out more about the park here: http://www.elephantnaturepark.org

This was by far one of the highlights of my trip. It was amazing, I was exhausted. I first saw them as we start to head down a winding mountain road, and there in the distance on the plain below where elephants! The various families traveling along in their tight knit groups. We made our way closer as we pulled in to the sanctuary we were greeted by a wide variety of dogs and cats. We were informed that Lek, the founder was a big believer in help all animals. We get the the main building where we dropped our stuff off at "our" table and were ushered to an area by a very pushy woman to receive safety instructions. 

The safety was pretty much common sense, elephants are large animals, they can hurt you, many have been abused, give them their space and always listen to your guide. This talk then went into exhaustive detail, which always makes me wonder what idiot has tried stuff in the past to make us have to listen to this. We came out of the talk just in time for the first round of elephant feeding. 

They were lined around the platform, which had a red line painted on the floor to indicate a safe distance while feeding. Their lunch consisted of watermelon, squash, corn and bananas. And they were eager to be fed. Many of the elephants are blind, because of mistreating, so it requires a little more help when getting the food to them.

Me feeding the elephant. My guide kept taking pictures of me, but unfortunately she wasn't very good a using my camera. Needless to say most of the pictures of me with the elephants are blurry. 

This elephant is blind in both eyes, the left eye was from an accident that occurred in a logging camp where she worked. After this she was hesitant and clumsy, her trainer or mahout then damaged her right eye with a sling shot when he was trying to encourage her to work harder. 

Baby Elephant! He's supposed to be on a special diet, but keeps coming to the feeding platform to steal he other's food. 

Baby and his mahout, each elephant has a mahout, who helps look after the elephant, there is a deep bond between the elephant and mahout. Often the manhout will stay with the elephants through the night when they first arrive to the park. Many of the mahouts here are refugees from Burma, and they describe that both them and their elephant counter parts have been given a second chance here. At ENP the mahout train the elephants by rewarding good behaviour, as opposed to the more traditional method where elephants are beaten into submission. 

After feeding the elephants the six of us and our guide go for a brief walk around some of the ground to meet several of the elephants. We made our way to the veterinary station where two elephants were receiving treatment. One elephant had on a boot, she had stepped on a land mine while logging on the Thai-Burma boarder several years ago and sense then she has been susceptible to infections in her foot because she now lacked the strong padding on the bottom of her foot. Another female was there getting  IV antibiotics for an infection.

While on the grounds our guide made sure to point out the two teenage males to us, named Hope and Naughty Boy. Male elephants are highly aggressive towards both humans and other elephants and can attack at any moment. Because of this in the wild male elephants travel alone and are not apart of family groups. Here they remain solo, but are still a little too close to the family groups and several of the females have been attacked. The are currently working on creating large outdoor enclosures for the two males. Until then when people are out on the ground the two male must be chained or "leashed" as our guide referred to it in order to ensure everyones safety.

After our brief tour we headed back to the main building for lunch. Everything was vegetarian and cooked in traditional Thai ways (minus the meat) and it was all incredible. We had some free time and then there was going to be a video presentation in the one common area.

The video was a documentary from a couple of years ago about Lek's project here. It showed the horrors of how elephants are traditionally broken and then trained to preform, give people ride or work in logging camps. Because elephants are classified as livestock in Thailand there are no laws here to protect them despite their endangered status. The elephants as babies are taken from their mother, confining in cages no bigger than themselves and beaten for several days until they stop resisting. For some elephants, often male elephants this may take weeks. As part of the outreach that Lek does she bring vets to the elephants undergoing this process so that the wounds that the elephants sustain can be treated. Another part of the out reach is to try and show that there is another way to train elephants that doesn't include abuse, but instead using a model where good behaviour is rewarded. Of course this process takes longer, but the elephants are then less likely to turn on the mahouts or other people and attack. The documentary then went on to talk about her sanctuaries, as the one in Chiang Mai is the first of three that are now operational. Many people were deeply moved by this video. I walked away feeling guilt over the elephant I had ridden early that week. Although it was a cool experience, I now know that the chances are very high that that elephant went through a horrible experience in order for me to have that experience.

After mild guilt trip we went and bathed the elephants. It was much happier. Bathing elephants consists of throwing buckets of water on the elephants to remove the mud and dirt off them. It was fun, the elephants were cute, I got soaked. 

After bathing came feeding time, again. Elephants need to eat an insane amount of food, which basically means that for the 22 hours a day that they are awake (I crazy who needs that little sleep?) that they are almost always eating. 

We then finally got checked into our rooms, they were rustic, but mine still boosted a king size bed complete with mosquito net, a hot(ish) shower and view of the elephant shelter. Where I could see some young elephants playing. I then took a quick shower, followed by a nap. When we went back to the main building we were left by our one guide and introduced to Apple, who would be with us for that evenings meal and then next day. After one more feeding and then hand washing it was time for dinner, after which the 7 of us sat around the table talking about our lives, experiences, the travel we've done and planned to do. It was good to get to know these other companions. It grew dark, and then a storm came in, we quickly lost power, and we all decided it was time to call it a night. We were warned that the elephants would have us up at dawn, so perhaps a 9pm bedtime wasn't all that bad.