Elephants

Today we visited the elephants at Elephant Care Chiang Mai. We nearly didn't! After days of research and deliberation about ethics and mistreatment we found Korn, and after an online chat decided to go for it.

After putting on our mahout tops Korn spent the 90 minute journey telling us about working with elephants. We really felt we got a better understanding and appreciation of the reality people working with elephants. These elephants are not rescued, elephants being used for logging ended a long time ago. Elephant tourism is big business in Thailand, so most elephants in these parks are raised in captivity. There are hundreds of these parks and we'd seen reviews of horrible visits where people were shocked at the treatment of the elephants. Fortunately, we were not.

The boys hang out on the back of the truck with Korn.

The park in the beautiful mountains of Northern Thailand.

The baby.

Time to get feeding. Elephants eat and eat and eat. We picked up 5 big bags of sugarcane on our way to the park and they gobbled the lot in no time.

'bone' is the command we had to shout. It means up. The elephants raise their trunks so we can pop the food in their mouths.

Freddy gets an elephant kiss.

A very strange feeling.

We head into the jungle for a wander with three elephants. Several trees were destroyed!

Back down the hillside. Several camps offer elephant riding Korn's did not. When big frame like saddles are used this can be damaging for the elephants backs. We were told that bare back riding on the neck was not damaging but have also read that it is.

After a walk it was time to cool off.

What a treat to splash around and bathe these wonderful animals.

Once we're finished the elephants head off and cover themselves in mud which acts as protection from sun and flies.

Crossing the bridge to leave the camp.

What are wonderful morning where we were able to see elephants just being elephants. Best option if course would be to see them in the wild. We are still not convinced about these parks but we saw elephants that were moving around freely, weren't performing tricks and weren't restrained in any way. 

At lunch someone let out a yelp. This giant centipede was under our table being harassed by the cat! Yuck!