One of the must do’s while in Chiang Mai, Thailand is to visit an elephant sanctuary. While there are many sanctuaries to visit from, we were particular with picking one that has no riding on the elephants. We ended up picking the Elephant Jungle Sanctuary hoping that we had made the right decision.
There are many options to pick from as far as how long you want to spend on the sanctuary. We decided just to do a half day. We were able to schedule this with our hotel receptionist. You could also schedule this and many other activities in Chiang Mai through the tons and tons of tour agencies scattered through out the cities.
We were picked up at our hotel and driven directly to the sanctuary. Unfortunately, the car that picked us up was about an hour late so we had to get the run down about the sanctuary while in the car. The Elephant Jungle Sanctuary has about 50 elephants in total, 40 of those were donated by tour agencies that wanted to stop using the elephants for riding. Ten of those elephants were bought by the sanctuary. Our driver also noted that the reason they do not want to offer riding because it is actually not good for the animals. Their back bones are not meant to have weight on them. He also noted that the reason they have a sanctuary is because the elephants are in more danger if they were left alone because of the growing human populations. Many elephants were killed because of unintentional interactions with people. In fact, some of the baby elephants in the sanctuary were taken in because their mothers were killed accidentally.
Once we arrived, we were able to hang out with a few of the elephants with supervision of course. Each elephants has a trainer or mahout that is in charged of them. The mahout and his elephants do sometimes develop a special bond that could last a lifetime. During our hang out times, we gave the elephants sugarcanes and bananas which were special treats that are not given to them very often because of the high sugar content. After giving them treats, we gave them a mud bath and a bath in the river at the end.
When we first got to the sanctuary, I was very hesitant and scared because of the massive size of these creatures. It was hard to become relaxed around them because they were so large. You can see in the video I attached below, the elephants ran right up to you because of the treats. But by the end I got better because I notice that the mahout really watch the elephants and make sure we are safe. The elephants themselves are very smart and gentle. They loved to be bathed and given treats and I can see that they are being well taken care of by the mahouts.
Here is the video of the us at the sanctuary.
Happy Travels!
