39,000 Miles

I just spent a week with Tida volunteering our time at an elephant rescue and sanctuary called The Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  I first heard about the park from another RTW blog.

The first day of volunteering we went to the ENP’s head office in Chiang Mai to sign in and meet the other volunteers.  There were tons of people from all walks of life, of all ages and all excited to be there and start working!  We got volunteer tshirts that first day, and many of us wore them continuously for the next week. 

We drove 2 hours away to reach the park, a drive that took us through a very scenic valley in which the park is located.  The first thing we did upon arriving at the park was feed the elephants their breakfast!!  There are large platforms throughout the main hut, both for safely viewing the elephants and park, and for feeding.  Large baskets full of fruit were brought out and we got to give handfuls at a time to eagerly waiting (and sniffing) trunks, stretched across the railing.  A very fun introduction to the park.

Hungry Ele

In the "elephant kitchen."

We then got together to view a documentary to learn about the park, and why elephant sanctuaries are needed in Thailand.  The park (and foundation) were started by a Thai woman named Sangduen “Lek” Chailert.  Having been around elephants since she was a little girl, she saw first-hand the horrific abuse and neglect that working elephants were subjected to.  She has been campaigning for elephant’s rights and welfare, a sole voice in a country where elephants bring in tourist dollars.  Elephants are used for illegal logging, street begging, circus shows and trekking, all which have severely negative mental and physical effects on the elephants.  They are kept in line using metal hooks, chains, whips.

All working elephants go through a training ritual called “pajan” which Thai owners put their elephants through, supposedly to domesticate them and make them afraid of people, and therefore obedient.  What really happens is no less than torture.  The young elephant, aged only 6 years or less, is dragged by at least 20 men using ropes around its legs into a “training crush,” a tiny bamboo cage which just barely fits the elephant.  Its legs are restrained, its head is tied so that it can’t move, the trunk is tied, even the tail is restrained.  It is a prisoner, unable to defend itself.  Then the “training” begins.  For 5 days and nights, with no food or water, the elephant is repeatedly stabbed around the ankles, the trunk, the head, the rear, the mouth, the eyes.  Their flesh is whipped.  The ears are ripped and they are even stabbed in the sensitive inner ear.  The elephant, just a toddler, since elephants live as long as we do, screams and trumpets in pain and fear.  Blood is everywhere.  I remember very clearly a shot of an elephant’s eyes while being tortured in the pajan, and seeing the absolute  terror in them, the memory of which still haunts me.  After that image I had to look away from the documentary, and my sister Tida says she saw footage of a mahout beating his tiny elephant on the head with a metal hook, and then forcing the baby to pick it up and hand it back to him when it fell to the ground.  The village shamans claim this “breaking of the spirit” is necessary to domesticate an elephant.  However, Lek wants to educate locals about how they can train their elephants using positive reinforcement, and that the pajan is a barbaric, unnecessary ritual.

Almost all of the elephants at the park have horrible histories of abuse and neglect by their owners and handlers.  Some were born at the park and therefore have only experienced loving hands and the freedom to run and forage and scamper like cheeky baby elephants are wont to do.

• Trekking elephants take up, by far, the largest number of working elephants used in tourism.  I don’t think the people who sign up for elephant treks are evil.  They simply don’t know how cruelly the elephants are treated, and the tourism industry wants to keep it that way.  A typical backpacker might think an hour trek couldn’t possibly be bad for an elephant, it’s just a walk isn’t it?  But what tourists don’t see are the metal hooks, the beatings, the chains and soulless elephants.  What they don’t know is that the elephant they are riding has been put through the pajan.
• Using elephants for street begging is illegal.  However, every day, across the city, street begging elephants trek 30 miles to and from Bangkok , where their mahouts (handlers) pay a corrupt police officer 500 baht (US$ 15) to look the other way.  They drink filthy water from Bangkok’s polluted canals, routinely get hit by cars, and essentially starve to death since they do not receive anywhere near the amount of food they require daily.  I learned at the park – elephants eat A LOT, about 300kg daily.
• Circus elephants are routinely beaten, and savagely, in order to train them to perform unnatural tricks in front of screaming crowds and blaring music.  When they are not performing, or being beaten during training, their legs are chained together so tightly they can’t move.
• Logging elephants routinely have broken backs from hauling heavy loads up and down mountain-sides and are worked around the clock without rest.

We had a routine in the park which was something like this:

• 7am:  Wake up
• 7:30am:  Have yummy breakfast and BIG cup of coffee
• 8am:  Start morning chores.
• 9:30am:  Start the morning project.
• 10:30am:  Start to bring out food baskets to different areas around the park where the elephants are fed
• 11:30am:  Morning feeding!
• 12pm:  Volunteer feeding!
• 1pm:  Elephant bath time
• 2pm:  Start the afternoon project.
• 4:30pm:  Afternoon ele feeding
• 6:30pm:  Dinner
• 8pm:  Evening entertainment (or free nights)
• 9pm:  Dead asleep in bed

During bathing time!

Cleaning out the shelters.

Our morning chores were either:

1. Preparing the elephant’s morning meal and helping out in the “elephant kitchen,” which is tougher work than it sounds.  Hauling endless bags of heavy fruit around, cleaning and sorting them is a great workout.
2. Going to the plantations to cut corn or bananas for the elephants.  Again, pretty fun!  Everyone gets handed a machete and goes to work cutting down rows of corn.  The hard part is carrying the heavy bundles back to the truck.
3. Cleaning out the elephant shelters (read: shovel poop).  This was actually quite relaxing, messy as it sounds.  Elephant poop is essentially balls of fiber.

There are many projects and errands to be done throughout the day, as the park depends on the work of its volunteers to keep the park running.  Volunteers help out doing things like keeping the shelters clean, building new shelters, varnishing buildings, cutting fruit and plants for the eles and so on.  Each week there are trips to Elephant Haven, a secluded piece of land the park owns, where 5-7 elephants at a time are taken so they can forage and roam in freedom.  We volunteers got to take a group, and spend the night up in Haven, on a simple but cozy platform in the middle of the jungle.

The gang at Haven.

Waiting for Jokia to finish foraging during our hike up to Haven.

We got to know so many awesome new elephants, people and dogs during our week there.  Of course among the favorites were the two babies, Faa Mai (6 mos) and Chang Yim (3 mos.)  Mae Bua Tong and Dok Ngern, the respective mothers, are very close and the day Chang Yim was born, Mae Bua Tong even broke through the fence to be near Dok Ngern as she gave birth.   Today their stable are right next to each other, and as Faa Mai falls asleep for her morning nap, cheeky Chang Yim continues playing next door, usually trying to eat Pom’s hair, (Pom is Lek’s unofficial next-in-command).  Faa Mai and Chang Yim are fully owned by the park, and will therefore never have to endure the pajan, and are trained using only positive reinforcement, so they can be handled during feeding, bathing and medical exams.

Cute explosion!! Six-month-old Faa Mai sucks on her trunk like a baby sucking her thumb.

Pom trying to get Chang Yim to sleep. He has other ideas.

The intertwining stories of Mae Perm and Jokia simultaneously break my heart and mend it back together.  Mae Perm is Lek’s first rescue, thought to be originally from Burma and used in Thailand for illegal logging.  She is 89 years old and one of the gentlest souls in the whole world.  Jokia was also rescued from a brutal life as a logging elephant, one that ultimately led to her being blinded by her handlers.  Jokia, heavily pregnant, was still forced to work around the clock, with no rest and insufficient food.  When she was tired and slow to work, her handlers shot rocks at her eyes with slingshots.  She lost her sight in that eye.  Her baby was born while she carrying a log up a steep hillside.  The baby, still in it’s umbilical sac, rolled down the hillside but Jokia’s handlers refused to let her rescue it, despite her cries.  The baby died, and Jokia plunged into depression,  so emotional are elephants.  When she refused to work, her handler shot her other eye with an arrow, and with that cruel act, she was blinded forever.  Jokia came to the park, where Mae Perm immediately took her under her wing.  They are now inseparable.  Mae Perma and Jokia communicate using low grumbles, as elephants commonly do.  When Jokia trumpets because she no longer knows where Mae Perm is, Mae Perm will come literally running to her side, trumpeting all the while.  They greet each other by lovingly running their trunks all over the other’s face and and trunk, reassuring the other and making what can only be described as happy squeaks.  How good does your heart feel right now?

Jokia (L) and Mae Perm (R) on their way to Elephant Haven

Hope, Jokia and Mae Perm come to greet us

Medo and Mae Mai are another bonded pair at the park, with Mae Mai serving as Medo’s unofficial bodyguard.  Medo, tiny compared to the other elephants, broke her ankle working as a logging elephant.  When she was no longer able to work as a logging elephant, she was sold to a new owner who used her as a breeding elephant.  She was restrained and tried to resist a large male, who attacked her, and broke her back.  The horrific nature of her injuries are obvious when you see her.  Her back is severely crippled.  But she was rescued and came to the park, where she can now roam freely, if slowly, and safely.  When walking through the park one day, I saw Mae Mai watching Medo from a distance.  She, without prompting from Medo, moved herself slowly between Medo and the path some of the park dogs which were walking down.  Medo is afraid of dogs.  Mae Mai slapped her trunk against the ground towards the dogs, an aggressive gesture that means, “stay away.”  The dogs, living at an elephant sanctuary, know this, and immediately steered away.

Tiny Medo has a broken back and ankle which was never treated before she came to the park. She is bonded to Mae Mai.

Speaking of dogs, I was officially and securely in dog heaven while at the elephant sanctuary.  Dogs find their way to the park in the most peculiar ways.  Some dogs are rescued to come stay here, some simply find their way and never leave, and some are village dogs that come floating down the river, stay a few days and then make their way back home.  The dogs have made natural packs, one of which stayed near our huts.  This meant we had a guest in our room every night, sleeping peacefully and sometimes snoring from underneath our bed.

Number One (yes, that is his name) makes himself comfortable in our room.

Phet, which means diamond in Thai, who would always greet me like this on my way back to the huts. Stick in mouth, wagging tail, curled down ears. What a heartbreaker!

It was a lot of hard work, but soooo satisfying to feel tired at the end of the day, watching big, beautiful, safe elephants in the distance as the sun sets.  I can’t recommend this experience enough.  For anyone that loves animals, loves Thailand and wants to do some good in the world, please consider volunteering at the park!  The foundation is developing a new sanctuary located in Surin, and they need your help more than ever.  The foundation would like to show the government and people in tourism that a sanctuary is possible!  And even if you can’t volunteer, please help spread the word about elephant welfare in Thailand and beyond!

Me and Tida with Lek, the Elephant Nature Park's founder, and an amazing woman!!