Trekking with Elephants, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Trekking with Elephants, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

June 2015.

Our minibus positively rattled through the Chiang Mai countryside. Dense jungle whooshed by along both sets of windows, an impenetrable blur of green. Located 60 kilometres from the city in a lush region of forest and jungle, the drive to Elephant Nature Park takes about an hour and a half.

I was really excited because, you know, elephants are amazing creatures. And due to the fact that ENP was offering an experience that promised to eclipse the only other time I’d gotten close these fascinating animals.

That memorable day had come over 11 years earlier in Kerala, India. At Kodanad Sanctuary I’d met half a dozen Indian Elephants. And had been privileged to take part in their morning bathing ritual.

In contrast, Elephant Nature Park was promising a much more profound encounter. The opportunity, no less, to spend an entire day with a group of Asian elephants. An experience that would see us give them their breakfast and go trekking through the jungle with them for their morning exercise. To generally hang out and, as in India, to bathe them.

Trekking with Elephants, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

ENP called this particular package the Sunshine for Elephants tour. As I write this, eight years later, they have downgraded the tour name to an altogether less creative Single Day tour. Happily, my group that day comprised of just seven people, including myself and Chanchai, our gregarious guide.

After arriving at the park, Chanchai led us into a garden courtyard by the main entrance where he treated everyone to tea and watermelon. As we munched, he proceeded to present a potted history of the sanctuary. It all began in 1998 when an expat, Adam Flinn, opened the park alongside a Thai woman by the name of Lek Chailert.

Chailert is something of a celebrity in Thailand. She has campaigned relentlessly against the practice of elephant crushing, where wild elephants are tamed using violence and negative reinforcement. She has also personally rescued around 200 elephants from abusive situations across Asia. Moreover, Time Magazine has described her as “One of Asia’s heroes”. 

Lek Chailert.

In the park’s early days the elephants performed tricks and offered rides. However, before long Lek began overseeing a complete change of ideology. She opened a hospital for sick and old residents called Elephant Heaven.

Next, Lek phased out all performances and ended riding. Operating it purely as an elephant haven and conservation reserve, the new business model relied on volunteers paying to live and work at the 250-acre park. Furthermore, visitors like me can go trekking with the sanctuary’s young, healthy elephants.

Thus ENP became something of a pioneer in international elephant welfare. No wonder the likes of Animal Planet, National Geographic and CNN came calling to report on the park’s work. And why Lek eventually found herself rubbing shoulders with people such as Hilary Clinton.

“Ok…. I think it’s breakfast time!” grinned Chanchai, clapping his hands together. But he wasn’t referring to us humans. Rather, it was time for the elephants to receive their morning chow. So we all followed Chanchai to a breakfast station where four hungry trunked beasts eagerly awaited our arrival.

Trekking with Elephants, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

The menu that morning seemed somewhat limited in scope. There was watermelon… watermelon and watermelon. Still, the elephants didn’t mind of course, as they love the stuff. What the meal lacked in variety it certainly made up for in volume, a mountain of watermelon chunks waiting on a large wooden table.

It was up to us to feed them. This was an experience I was blessed to have again five years later when I visited Kulen Elephant Sanctuary in Cambodia. On both occasions I was struck by how gentle they were, despite their obvious hunger and excitement. Their trunks gliding purposefully but elegantly towards my hand before softly clipping each piece from my grasp.

Within ten minutes all the watermelon was gone. “There’s more!” called Chanchai, appearing with a wheelbarrow stacked with half a dozen buckets of the stuff. But it took just another five minutes before that had been guzzled up too!

Apparently elephants don’t need time for their breakfast to settle in their stomachs. Indeed Chanchai announced that we would be heading straight off into the jungle for our hike. Amusingly, the elephants immediately understood the drill and began slowly plodding towards the start of the trail before Chanchai had even said anything.

Elephant Nature Park.

Accompanied by a local mahout, we headed off into the jungle, the elephants themselves leading the way. “Wassana will show you where to go” laughed Chanchai. Initially, I thought he was joking, but that’s exactly what Wassana did!

Her name translates as destiny. Luckily for Wassana, her destiny was to be rescued from a miserable life of elephant riding for retirement at ENP. Where she could spend her days eating, playing with other elephants and trekking with curious humans like me.

I liked Wassana straight off the bat. Especially her sad, soulful eyes and the way she would stop and wait for me to move to the side if I was ever in her way. Truly, a classy lady.

I also loved Mae Deng, a survivor of poachers who had killed most of her herd. According to Chanchai, she’s more wayward than some of the other elephants and often needs encouragement to stay on the correct route. To help keep her focused, Chanchai gave me a bag of bamboo chunks for Mae Deng to munch on. Yes, it worked a treat.

For the most part, the elephants quickly swallowed up any bamboo sticks on offer. Sometimes though, if they needed a short breather from eating, or if they were preoccupied with something else, they’d simply store their bamboo bites in their jaw for later.

Trekking with Elephants, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Bamboo sticks…. leaves… tree fruit… grass… shrubbery…. bush roots… the elephants hardly stopped eating during the entire hike. On any given day, in fact, an elephant will smash its way through 149 to 169 kilos of vegetation.

It was mesmerising to watch them go about their business. Slow but steady, and always on the lookout for the next food source. Which reminded me of myself a bit when I was in my early twenties. Just replace vegetation with junk food.

We walked for several hours. Up dusty inclines, down rocky paths and along narrow trails that passed through thick sections of forest. Sometimes the elephants were behind us, other times a little way ahead. Now and then stomping right beside me, it was absolutely exhilarating.

At some point the heat really kicked in for everyone, humans and elephants. Pausing for breath, and to wipe my face and neck with the little hand towel I’d brought with me, I drank greedily from the water bottle Chanchai had given me back in the park.

The elephants meanwhile had their own ingenious system for cooling down. Basically, they began scooping up a load of dirt and leaves off the ground with their trunks. Then sprayed the contents up into the air and down onto their heads and backs!

Elephant Nature Park.

The dirt acts as a layer of protection from the sun. As a bonus, it also keeps bothersome bugs off vulnerable parts of their skin. Just another special moment to witness in a day packed with wonderment.

Following another forty minutes or so of hiking we stopped for a lunch at a gazebo somewhere deep in the jungle. Much to our surprise, a long wooden table had been set up ahead of time with plates and cutlery. We had barely taken in our surroundings when a Thai man emerged from the kitchen with trays of delicious food. It was just what the doctor ordered.

There were freshly prepared warm, salty poppadums and crispy veggie-stuffed spring rolls with chilli sauce. A zingy papaya salad too and a hillock of pineapple chunks. Nothing went to waste.

And the icing on the cake was a wonderful and generous helping of mango with sweet sticky rice. One of my favourite Thai desserts.

While we ate, the elephants took a rest. One even napped standing up, eyes open. The open eyes part being an unusual elephant trait, Chanchai was keen to point out.

Trekking with Elephants, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

At a polite distance the mahout looked over proceedings, as he did throughout the whole day. He took his lunch at the foot of a nearby tree, away from the group, preferring to keep an eye on the elephants at all times. As I lined up this photograph, he caught me in the act and I captured a rare smile.

Finally, we were ready to move on. The elephants just needed ten minutes to wake up and gather their wits. Some petting here and there helped in this regard. “A little stroke behind the ear!” called Chanchai, helpfully.

On the way back to Elephant Nature Park Chanchai stopped the group just a few times. The first pause was to point out the charming sight of a pile of dried elephant dung. Why? Because take a moment to look and you’ll see that there are watermelon seedlings growing out of the poop.

Watermelon seeds aren’t digestible, they just pass straight through the body. And elephants digest less than half of what they consume, which means their dung is a fantastic fertiliser.

A Job Well Dung!

Our second timeout was for a really worthy cause and one of my favourite moments of the day. Deeply involved in local conservation, ENP also works to protect trees in the local region. “You know, the government are chopping down more and more trees every year” grumbled Chanchai, wiping his brow with a grimace.

Hence Lek and her team began a protection program, using their income to pay for hundreds of trees to be marked for protection. That afternoon each of us got to rubber stamp a tree’s protected status by tying a yellow cloth around it. This felt so good!

Closing in on the park, we came across an impressive natural rock slide. There were other tour groups horsing around on it. “Guys, have a quick ride on the slide” winked Chanchai. “Then we’ll go straight for the river. Elephants need to cool off”.

At the river it was so much fun watching the elephants lower themselves into the water. There were soft growls among each other and several high trumpets of pure joy and relief. In order to help them fully relax and clean up, we sloshed water over them with the plastic pots Chanchai gave us. The elephants loved this, lapping up the attention.

Trekking with Elephants, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

One or two of the elephants though broke free mid-wash to spray themselves with mud. Which I imagined kind of defeated the whole project. Oh well. “Yeah, they’ll do that sometimes” nodded Chanchai, with a wry smile.

Just before leaving, Chanchai announced that a rival tour company was heading towards us down the river in a raft. “Listen guys, we have a tradition with this company” he explained, gathering us together. “They are gonna try and attack us with water guns and pots. So get ready to fight back, ok!” 

He wasn’t kidding. We saw and indeed heard them gearing up for warfare long before they reached us. Happily we were more than ready and gave as good as we got, the river briefly turning into a frenzied battle zone for the minute or so that it took them to whoosh by.

Our tour concluded with a gentle stroll around Elephant Nature Park itself. The grounds are beautifully kept and wonderfully green. Everywhere I looked there was an elephant or two mooching around, clearly at peace in its surroundings. Here and there, a large group had convened for an afternoon chatter.

Elephant Nature Park.

As lovely a scene as it was, there were heartbreaking stories in every corner. This gal for example (pictured below), worked for a construction company for decades transporting various heavy goods. One day she was hit by a truck, sustaining injuries so bad that her employer was going to put her down.

Luckily, ENP stepped in, nursed her back to full health and gifted her a happy retirement in the park. “Look carefully” said Chanchai, “her back leg is pretty much useless, just a passenger”.

Another of the park’s rescued elephants worked in the logging industry in Laos for twenty years. Her owners were physically violent whenever she didn’t perform to expectations. As a result, she still shows signs of mental anguish and prefers to spend large parts of the day alone quietly.

This is Lucky (below), a former circus performer. Chanchai told us how they don’t know exactly what happened to her, but an accident of some sort left her completely blind. Her first year at the park was a difficult one as she struggled to adapt to her new life.

“These days I think she is one of the happiest elephants here” he smiled. As if on cue, Lucky moved forward and reached out with her trunk to touch his shoulder with a hello.

Trekking with Elephants, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

It was time to head back to Chiang Mai. As we made our way towards the minibus I discovered one more aspect to life at ENP that I’d been unaware of. In the last few years they’d also started rescuing homeless dogs from all over the country!

“Now we have adoption program” explained Chanchai. Near the minivan I spotted a fluffy white dog panting happily by a motorbike. “This is Jingle” he told me. “Unfortunately he was dumped by his owners and found in a terrible mess in the forest. But you know he’s lucky, an Australian family in Chiang Mai gonna come and pick him up tomorrow”.

Lucky indeed, and yet another ENP success story. “See you later Lucky” I said, climbing into the minibus. It had been an unforgettable day and one that I wished could last a few hours longer. But alas it was time to head back to Chiang Mai. “Have a safe trip!” called Chanchai, waving to us all. “Thanks for coming. Your visit here is so important to us and the animals. An elephant never forgets”. 

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