On our way upto the Big Buddha, Phuket we passed 2 elephant trekking sites, and I pointed out the elephants to my daughter. We were both excited to see these amazing animals there by the side of the road! I had asked the taxi driver at the first ones we saw if you could travel the rest of the way up by elephant. He said no, and that the next ones on the way were at a better site if we wanted to see elephants.
On the way back down from visiting the Big Buddha, I asked if we could stop to see the elephants, at ATV Seaview Elephant Trekking Camp on the hill just down from the famed Big Buddha. I paid for a basket of bananas to feed them. They had a baby one there who you had to peel the bananas for, but the adult elephants just ate them skins included.
I have had a particular fascination with elephants ever since I saw this amazing video of Tara and Bella from an elephant sanctuary:
When we stopped, I had only intended to stop and see them, and perhaps feed them; but a lady there did a heavy sales pitch on me, and told me that we’d see baby monkeys… Our taxi driver told her off, and told me that there were no monkeys in this area (though to be honest, we had just seen wild monkeys at the Bug Buddha a few minutes up the road-so it wouldn’t have surprised me). That said, the monkeys weren’t the attraction any way-I was absolutely mesmerised by these huge majestic creatures!
I ended up relenting and agreeing to go on the trek up the hill; strangely for me-I didn’t even attempt to haggle or barter the price down. We were asked to remove our shoes (since our feet would rest on the elephant) and climb up onto a platform where we could easily access the seat on the elephant’s back.
Our elephant was called Natalie… Not very a very Thai name, but that was her name and she responded to it. Our tour guide was quite a funny character and kept talking to Natalie and she appeared to talk back by making a slightly squeaky ‘honking’ noise in response. We were sat on a chair on her back, whilst he sat on her neck with his legs straddled around her.
Initially I was concerned about these amazing animals being used for tourism, but when I asked him how old Natalie was, he told me 10, and when I asked how long he had worked with her, he emphatically replied “She has been with me for 10 years… I LOVE HER. She is my woman-aren’t you Nataliiiiiiie!?” She made a squeaky honk back at him. He also more or less allowed her to walk off and pull at the leaves and plants with her trunk to eat, without being demanding that she walk in a straight line, and I began to get the impression that there was a genuinely affectionate bond between them.
At the half way point, there was a panoramic look out point, and a man ran out to take pictures of us. I asked if we could have some with my own camera, and our guide told me ‘after’… I was concerned that they just wanted to sell me pictures, but at the top, he Jumped off Natalie, took my camera and offered me the opportunity to get into the position he had been in on Natalie! I felt very privileged as this was more of the experience I wanted and imagined, and felt less contrived than sitting in a chair on an elephant.
Whenever he told Natalie “Nataliiiie? Will you please do your sexy pose for meeee?!” She would do a squeaky honk and raise her trunk in the air. It was very sweet. I was fascinated by the way she felt: rough and wrinkly with dryish skin and thick, coarse hair poking out of her skin. I stroked her, and asked if Elephants liked being touched and stroked on their heads and he said yes. The tour guide seemed like a bit of a softie. A female dog was following us, and he explained that he had ‘adopted her’ as she was pregnant and malnourished. She had clearly been lactating, and certainly didn’t look malnourished any more.
He took lots of pictures for me including one of Natalie’s elephant dung, (which his dog-who was following us promptly ate-grim huh?!) Thanks for that you nutter, I’ve included it in the slide show for you to enjoy as much as I had to. I found myself having to hold back branches of trees that Natalie was yanking at with her trunk as she just wandered off to the side of the path way and ate at at her leisure. If I hadn’t, the branches would have whipped back and hit me in the face; but I didn’t complain, because I thought it was rather lovely that she was allowed to do as she pleased, and she had a lovely temperament.
Our guide made some ‘crowns’ by weaving fern leaves together and told me I was the ‘queen of the jungle’… In fact-it made me look like a dork, and my 4 year old refused to wear it, but I embraced the silliness and Natalie was happy to pose holding my daughter’s unworn ‘crown’ in her trunk for a picture.
I loved riding Natalie, and I loved her personality! As we came down the hill to return to the elephant camp, there was a large muddy puddle on the ground. We saw some other tourists approaching us on one of Natalie’s elephant friends, and she filled up her trunk from the puddle and sprayed them! I thought that was so funny and mischievous!
Just before we turned the corner back to the camp, our guide asked me to return to the seat and got back onto Natalie. He then turned around and proceeded to go into a guilt trip based sale of over-priced jewellery, telling me that he needed the money to help feed and care for Natalie. Up until that point, I thought that it was all quite charming, but this was a little off putting. The jewellery also resembled ivory-which he assured me it was not. He told me it was coconut I think (I might have imagined that though). My daughter was keen to have a bracelet, so in the end I relented, but I didn’t for one second thing that the money was for Natalie, so that did take the edge off what was otherwise a magical experience.
In retrospect, I think that the tourist in me was not terribly switched on… The taxi driver had told me that this was a better site than the other one, though in retrospect, I may have been naive to assume this was not because he earned commission/better commission from this elephant camp. Also whilst I was researching just now, I found this news piece that has left me feeling a little uncomfortable at having been there, as it would seem that the baby I photographed was taken from his mother at a different elephant sanctuary in Thailand.
That said, there is no doubt in my mind that these elephants were not malnourished or unhappy. In fact, if this story here is anything to go by, the baby elephant who was removed actually seemed quite traumatised to be leaving and so he must have actually been very happy there. Either way-if you are planning to go elephant trekking. Then my advice would be to research before you go, and to make sure you go to a proper elephant sanctuary that rehabilitates abused elephants rather than a tourist hotspot that is there to make money for profit, so that you are only supporting the people who 100% have the elephants best interests at heart.
NB Please check out this response post that was kindly guest written by Amy, who’s comments you may like to read below if you are considering doing this… I was shocked and appalled to discover how awfully animals like Natalie are treated in order to enable experiences like the one I had…
Other Posts you might Like:
Thailand (part 1)… Evason & Bon Island, Ruwai and the South tip of Phuket
Thailand (Part 2) The Big Buddha, Phuket
Thailand (Part 4) Phuket Monkey School… A Seriously Uncomfortable Experience
Thailand (Part 5) Caving in a Sea Canoe in Thailand with John Grays
Thailand (Part 6) Visit the Island of Phi Phi
Thailand (Part 7) Patong, Bangla Road and Lady Boy Shows!
Bungee Jump – PHUKET!
Visit Maldives for the 1st Time
GUEST POST: Why you might not want to ride an elephant, after all!
Emma's Bucket List 
Jealous! That looks like a blast. I have taken a ride on a camel, but never an elephant.
Annette it was really really lovely. I sat there thinking to myself ‘I MUST soak this experience up-I am SO lucky!’ I loved Natalie 🙂
Awesome – Natalie looks like quite the sweetie! Love elephants – they may be giant, but they are so wonderful!
Hi Anita! Thank you for stopping by my blog! It was a truly magical experience, but maybe worth reading the comments below before you consider it-I know they would have made me stop and visit an elephant sanctuary instead! I am still glad I got to feed them and stroke her though. Natalie was AMAZING
Unfortunately, regardless of what people tell you or what you think you saw, it can be difficult for the layperson to know whether an elephant is healthy and happy. There are better tourist operations and worse, but there are none that are very good. Remember that what you see isn’t what counts — it’s what you DON’T see. The training, for instance, is especially brutal but you will never see it.
There are only two elephant sanctuaries in Thailand: the Elephant Nature Park (ENP) and Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary (BLES). You cannot ride the elephants at either one.
I urge you to visit an excellent website called Elemotion
http://www.elemotion.org/elephant-tourism/
to learn more about elephant tourism. I would also be happy to discuss this further with you offline.
Thanks for the comment Amy. It was only when I was reading up about elephant trekking yesterday that I found the news articles I linked to. I wish I hadn’t been so over-excited and naive. That said-the man did seem genuinely to adore Natalie, and Natalie was allowed to wander off track and amble around as she pleased without too much in the way of direction.
I would feel genuinely awful if I had unknowingly contributed to the unhappiness of an elephant. I really did think she was one of the most amazing animals I had ever encountered.
I have been fascinated with them ever since I saw this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBtFTF2ii7U
Such great photos! Shame it was a little spoiled by the pushy sales tactics at the end but I’m sure you enjoyed it anyway. Hadn’t thought about adding this to my bucket list so far…
Well you may like to read Amy’s comment above before you do… But if you can find somewhere that is reputable and where the elephants are happy, then I would totally recommend it. I was in love with her and so was my daughter.
I think I’ll just add to go and look at them and watch them play rather than ride on them after reading Amy’s comments. So sad that such lovely creatures are exploited in this way.
Emma — Thanks so much for being open.
The video you linked to is of Tarra the elephant and Bella the dog (now deceased) at The Elephant Sanctuary. Carol Buckley, the woman who raised Tarra and started the Sanctuary has started a new organization, Elephant Aid International — http://www.elephantaidinternational.org
You might be interested in her work. She is now working on creating India’s first elephant care and rehabilitation center (sanctuary) —
http://www.elephantaidinternational.org/projectsDetail.php?recordID=5
It’s an incredible project and, Carol being who she is, it will also have benefits for wild elephants. You can keep up with her progress here —
http://www.carolbuckley.com/elevisions/
I did see that Bella the dog had died-so sad. Apparently Tara still visits Bella’s grave which I found very touching-they are clearly very emotional animals!
Thank you for the links. Do you work with Carol yourself? I hope that the Thai Government tighten up on things like tourist operations with Elephants if they are not treating them well…
I am about to write up a piece about my visit to the Phuket Monkey School… That was just AWFUL. It was not something I had planned, my taxi driver suggested it, and to be honest it left me feeling sick to the pit of my stomach afterwards. I’m pretty ashamed to admit I went, but I feel I should write about it-so that others know what to expect, and so that perhaps it wont continue to profit from it’s exploitation of these amazing animals.
I will donate some money to your friend Carol’s cause in a bid to make merit (as the Buddhists would say), as I now feel I may have earned some bad karma!
Elephants, like most herbivores, have stoibmyic bacteria in their gut that helps them break down their food. They are not born with these bacteria the only way for a calf to get them is to eat the faeces of its mother or other elephants. Some of the bacteria are excreted with the faeces, and by eating them the calf acquires the essential bacteria.Also, an elephant’s digestive system is not very efficient. What comes out is not that much different from what goes in it still contains some nutritional value that the gut failed to extract. Therefore, an elephant can eat another elephant’s (or its own) dung and gain some good from it. In order to compensate for this digestive inefficiency, elephants have to eat almost round the clock to ensure they get enough nutrition from their food.
Thank you for sharing Swapna
I have more than one friend who has worked for years with elephants in Asia. Unfortunately, there are no really good tourist operations. Cruelty is deeply embedded in Asia elephant training — they don’t know any other way and view elephants differently than we do. I have no doubt that there are Asians who care about their elephants but they see them differently than we do — they are work animals and, especially in Thailand, have to earn their keep.
You should check out Boon Lott’s. Not only do they rescue elephants, they hire their mahouts to care for them using compassionate methods —
http://www.blesele.org/
Awhh, I just took a look at that website. The pictures of the elephants are amazing. I remember being in Kenya and watching one elephant running back and forth from a lake to re-fill his trunk so he could spray a flock of birds. It was totally mischievous and very funny and cute to watch! I am so fascinated with them.
In Goa (India), my partner went to an elephant sanctuary, and although he was not able to ride the elephant. They did allow him to sit on the elephant’s back and help wash her… I say h’he helped her’ loosely. Actually, it was more like she washed him! LOL! She was filling her trunk, then spraying it over her own back and he was getting soaked, but he was rubbing the water into her skin.
I was SO JEALOUS at the time… I guess I let my desire to be close to elephants to override my common sense a little bit, and I have to confess to feeling terribly guilty now if I have contributed in some way to an industry which isn’t beneficial to elephants 😦
Emma — Don’t feel guilty. We are all learning. It’s natural to want to be close to elephants — they are such amazing beings (much more evolved than humans! 🙂 ).
Thank you, but I am normally quite shrewd with things like this… I guess I left my common sense at home when I went out that day! I hope that my gut feelings that he did genuinely care deeply about Natalie were well founded. The taxi driver did seem to think it was the better place of the ones we saw, but as you say, Thais probably have different benchmarks of ‘decent’ and his subsequent recommendation of the monkey school certainly proved that! 😦
With elephants you really need to know what you’re looking at (other than really obvious physical conditions) to know if they’re happy and healthy. For instance, foot health is crucial — foot problems can kills eles — but beyond obvious injuries, deformities, etc., we laypeople can’t tell what state feet are in. So don’t beat yourself up. Again, we’re all learning.
It would be wonderful if you would donate to EAI! Carol is the best. She and Dame Daphne Sheldrick are the world’s leaders in rescuing and rehabilitating elephants!
Thank you so much!
Amy, are you able to tell from these pictures whether ‘my’ Natalie was healthy? I would love to know that she was. I would feel a little bit better about my ignorance if I at least knew she wasn’t unhealthy
Emma — I don’t know enough even to make an uneducated guess but I can share this link with friends who do and ask them.
One thing I do know is that those chairs they wear for people to sit on can be extremely uncomfortable and injure the eles in the long or short term — they can cause spinal injuries, etc., from carrying too-heavy loads for too long. You notice that they leave them on even when the eles are supposedly resting.
Also — Natalie is only 10. Elephants’ lifespan is like that of humans. So Natalie is still only a kid. They probably took her from her mother very young (eles aren’t weaned until they’re 4 or 5) to begin her training.
Did you notice how many feet they chained the eles by when they’re weren’t working? I can’t tell from the photos.
I’ll send the link to a couple friends. It may take them a little while to get back to me but I’ll let you know what they think.
Only one foot was chained. I feel rotten now… Poor Natalie-I would have taken her home if I could have! She was so lovely
Did they have water available to them?
Is it awful that I can’t recall? To be honest, I really cannot remember-I wish I could! Would Natalie have been so ready to squirt the water at the other elephant rather than drink it instead if she were thirsty?
Not at all! You didn’t know what to look for and didn’t know that someone would be grilling you for details. 😉
Yeah — I guess she might not squirt another ele if she were really, really thirsty.
That’s made me feel a little bit better. Do you write a blog at all?
I don’t. I’m never sure if I have enough to say at one time and can be coherent enough lol.
I did a guest blog for a friend a few years ago —
http://nothoney.com/2009/03/25/ringling-marches-eles-into-dc-while-judge-ponders-their-fate/
and the Animal Planet news blogger used some of my photos —
http://blogs.discovery.com/animal_news/2009/08/circus-elephant-abuse.html
And, actually, I’m getting ready to go out to witness Ringling’s annual ele POW march this evening.
That post almost made me cry. Those elephants did not look happy at all
They’re not happy. They’re beaten down and depressed. To tell you the truth, I don’t see much difference between circus eles and eles used for tourism in Asia, except the eles in Asia get to spend more time outdoors. Last night I was glad for the eles that at least it was a beautiful warm evening. That brief 40 minutes between the train and the bowels of the Verizon Center will be the only time they’re outdoors until they leave on Sunday. And then it’s on to the next destination.
I heard back from one of my friends about Natalie: “Can’t really tell the elephants condition but, spraying water is a trained behavior to amuse the tourists. The elephant is too small to be doing rides.”
Thought this op ed might interest you —
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/elephant-walk-tests-the-buddhist-principles-of-a-trained-mind-and-inner-peace/2012/03/12/gIQA9D869R_story.html
When you were in Kenya, did you visit the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust? They are amazing!!!
http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/
Actually, I was only a child, so I am not too sure, but I could find out. It was on a safari (I think) I know that David Attenborough filmed at the place we visited at some point after we were there
Carol is a friend of mine and, yes, I volunteer with EAI. You should read more about Carol — she and Tarra used to be in the circus and she went on to create the Sanctuary, which used to be the gold standard for elephant management in captivity. (Carol was ousted by the board of directors 2 years ago in a very ugly coups and she has not been allowed to see Tarra since then — and they’ve known each other for 36 years! But that’s another story.) But she will do amazing things in Asia, too!
The Thai government…sigh.Corrupt, unfotunately. In the past weeks they have raided the Widlife Friends Foudnation of Thailand in retaliation for its founder speaking out against illegal ele trade —
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-749251
The poo has a large quantity of water and fiber (actually make paper from eleahpnt poo) so the eleahpnt might have done it to get a bit more to drink or something extra to eat.
the dog ate it, not the elephant! But thanks for that slightly grim image 🙂
Please read up on the PHAJAAN (aka the Crush) Every single Elephant you ride has been through the torture of the PHAJAAN (crushing the Elephants spirit by abduction abuse, starvation & torture until they become useable for profit). Millions of tourists are fooled by the slight revamping of experiences that each camp/farm/trekking service provides but I promise you if you knew how to see the abuse hidden, you would never pay a single penny to be a part of this abuse as you have above.
Each of these Elephants has been stolen from their mother & herd to be PHAJAAN trained to be useable for your Bucket list. Female Elephants never leave their herd by choice, it is always man who steals them. Male Elephants do leave their familial herd when they reach sexual maturity in order to seek non familial mates in order that the high-energy-output pregnancy (18-22months long) is viable & not likely to be miscarried or still born. But contrary to aged perceptions, Bulls (male Elephants) don’t live a completely solitary life, they join other males in groups where they learn from the elders as they migrate their habitat.
Removing Elephants from their families is abhorrent no matter what spin people put on it or how they dress it up/tell themselves the place was kind. The abuse scars, malnourishment & ailments are visible in these photos.
Thankfully (thanks to Lek Chailert of Elephant nature park- save the Elephant foundation), many trekking camps are now converting to ‘observe & feed only’ allowing Elephants their autonomy again, giving back a small part of what was stolen from them.