Elephant Nature Park and the best birthday

Emma Writes

The mighty Asian Elephant now numbers less than 30,000. No longer used by the legal and illegal logging trade to haul huge trees, decimating their own natural environment, the remaining workers have mostly been turned into tourist attractions. These symbols of strength now carry, mostly western, tourists around on spine breaking seats, perform demeaning tricks begging on the frightening and confusing city streets at night, or are forced by a sharp hook to paint self portraits. There are many, many tour groups in Chiang Mai offering all of these things, but the cruelty the baby animals have to go through in order to 'learn' how to do them and respond to their trainers is barbaric, but sadly widely practised throughout Asia.

Elephant Nature Park, however, is a different and simple concept - Let elephants be elephants. The creatures in this park no longer work for humans and are free to roam around during their days, whilst visitors here can interact, feed, bathe and walk with them into the forest. Much better to walk alongside an elephant, than ride on top. Better still to simply observe them in their own habitat. Each elephant here has a heart breaking story of cruelty and neglect which led the park's founder Sangduen 'Lek' Chailert to rescue them. Lek is a true inspiration, who has spent her life tirelessly and passionately working for the rights of the Asian Elephant in Thailand and beyond.

We stumbled across the Elephant Nature Park's office in the town centre, saw their conservation and education policies and immediately booked for a two day visit. The only regret we have is that we didn't sign up for a week's work. But we'll be back.

My birthday dawned bright and early, as we had a bus picking us up from our lovely guest house, Chiang Mai Thai House. Matt had sneaked off one day to the park's office and bought an elephant birthday card, and so the theme began. He'd even gone to the trouble of learning difficult Thai writing to put inside, but I think there may have been a little help from our friendly man at the guest house reception, Moon.

Our mini bus was full of excited people from all over the world and our guide Mr Chai and driver Mr Toon, as we stopped at a local fruit and veg stall a little out of town to stock up on the day's food supplies - two pick up trucks of watermelon, pineapple, cucumber, pumpkin and bananas... all elephant treats.

Onwards towards the park and we'd been joined by the fluffiest puppy I'd ever seen. Looking like a soft toy, she flopped on the dash board of the bus and ripped a toilet roll to pieces, before we rescued her from the van floor and the big people's feet, to cuddle her the rest of the way. The park is not only home to elephants, there's also around 40 or 50 dogs, tens of cats, cows and water buffalo too. For Matt and I this really was animal lover's heaven.

We arrived right at feeding time, and our first glance at these magnificent creatures was from the wooden feeding platform as they gathered round, jostling for their favourite position. Huge plastic baskets were being prepared for each of the 30 elephants living at the park. Some liked everything, but others, it seemed were fussy eaters. We immediately got stuck in, feeding a hungry male called Jungle Boy, easily recognisable as the only elephant in the park with his large tusks intact. Watched closely by Chi, his Mahout (elephant keeper), we looked on in amazement as half a watermelon at a time was put away, followed by whole pineapples, spikes and all. He flatly refused the cucumber, slapping his huge trunk down onto the platform in protest until we delved back into the basket to produce more melon. Only then did his snout come to life, sniffing around until we placed the favoured fruit in the end for him to skillfully curl towards his soft mouth.

After feeding time for elephants, it was feeding time for people, with the tastiest buffet of Thai food we've yet encountered. We sat, plates on knees on the platform, watching all of the elephants lumber off into the huge park to continue grazing.

The elephants here are free to form family groups and make friends, one of the most important things in an elephant's life. There's the story of females, Jokia and Mae Perm: Jokia's past life was spent working in the illegal logging trade. Actually pregnant whilst forced to do this work, she gave birth on the job and her calf fell down the hillside to its death. Chained to the ground, the traumatised Jokia was unable to retrieve her baby and refused to work. Her mahout used rocks to make her work, but a badly aimed slingshot blinded her in one eye. After this, she was more unwilling to work and her angry mahout took a knife to the other eye. Completely blind, and so anxious and violent, Jokia was found by Lek and taken to Elephant Nature Park where older elephant, Mae Perm, took to her. The two ladies are now found side by side every day. Mae Perm reaches out to Jokia with her trunk, showing her where the good food is, calling instructions and reassurance. It was an amazing sight on our first day, Jokia had wandered too far away from her friend, trumpeting pleas out to Mae Perm, who came rumbling towards her at a great speed with reassuring trumpets of her own. A beautiful example of elephant friendship.

After lunch it was time to bathe the elephants. In scorching heat we took buckets and scrubbing brushes down to the river and jumped straight into the cool water when the nearest elephant had rolled onto her side. We threw bucket fulls of brown water over the beautiful wrinkled skin of Mae Boon and scrubbed the mud and grass from her back, only for her to emerge and reapply her 'sunscreen' later.

Then it was time for the babies to show their skills. Lek’s training methods at the park use positive reinforcement and through this the baby elephants here are learning all the basic skills of working elephants, but through a reward system using bananas or bread rather than sticks and beatings. I had the pleasure of an elephant kiss from Baby Tong Jan. A bit like a vacuum hose, she put her trunk on my cheek and sucked. I was in love! She can lift legs when asked and put hats on people's heads. This is all proving to the multitude of elephant trekking and tourist shows that cruelty is not the only way to train an elephant.

After a second bath time of the day we were shown our rooms for the night; a beautiful wooden cabin, mattress on the floor and mozzie nets up to protect us from the little biters. Another lush buffet dinner was laid on followed by a divine sticky rice and mango dessert. Just as I was chatting to another visitor about the electricity supply in this part of the world being great, the lights went out. And up the stairs came Matt with a huge cake with candles attracting all the flies in the building... An elephant birthday cake and Happy Birthday song! Then the ladies who provide massages all tied strings around my wrists for luck and gave me a necklace. I suppose I look like one of those hardened teenage travellers now but I think I have to leave them on three days, otherwise no luck. And who am I to argue? Tasty tasty cake and lovely surprise. Apparently when Matt sneaked off to the office to buy a card he bumped into Lek there who arranged it for me. It made an already amazing day even better and I'm very grateful.

A campfire by the river with a talk about the plight of the Burmese rounded off the day. We retired to tie knots in our mosquito nets where all the holes were and try and sleep through the noise of the elephants snoring...

Day two. We were up at the crack of dawn to see the elephants still in their shelters, the dogs asleep on cushions under the huts and the camp awakening at its own pace. We had an elephant and dog walk in the morning where we walked along the river bed with our huge (and furry) friends to watch the elephants graze and dogs romp around whilst we heard their individual stories. We had with us Mae Boon and her baby Aura. Mae Boon was a trekking elephant who, in a bad way after giving birth, is now leased to the park to regain her health and allow the baby a positive start to life. Lek pays the owner a fee for looking after his elephants for him, eating her food and sharing her land. It's the same as him making money from them from tourists. Sadly, Aura will have to leave the park and return to her owner when she is old enough to perform at the tourist shows, leaving a big hole in her family unit.

The same format as the previous day, we were back from our walk for feeding time. Today Matt fed Baby Tong Jan, and I her mother, Mae Bua Tong, just next to her. Not fussy about what they ate, they stuffed it all into their mouths and still wanted more. Followed by another great buffet for us, followed by bath time and then we sat for a good few hours watching a family refuse to leave the water. Baby Far Side was determined to make it up the other side of the river bank and it seemed the Mahout had no control over this feisty little/big one. The different characters of the elephants were becoming apparent to us and we really regretted that were weren't staying a week as volunteers.

If anyone is reading this, thinking of visiting elephant trekking parks to take a ride, I urge you instead to rethink - spend some time alongside these magnificent creatures instead of on top. You and they will get much more from it.

http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/

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