As you may already know from my first blog post, or from the numerous throwbacks I have posted on Instagram, I went travelling for three months at the end of last year.
Throughout my trip, I had a lot of highlights. I even spent part of my flight home preparing my answer to the inevitable question, “what was your favourite part?” that everyone would ask me when I saw them afterwards. It was hard to pinpoint the very best moment, but my day at an elephant sanctuary in Thailand was definitely up there!
Visiting an elephant sanctuary was something I knew I wanted to do in Thailand, so when we arrived in Chiang Mai (in the north of Thailand), finding one was our first mission. Unfortunately, there are places which claim to be elephant sanctuaries despite mistreating the elephants, so make sure you do your research before booking. The sanctuary I visited was called ‘Into the Wild Elephant Camp’, and I highly recommend it!
Our day began in a red pickup truck taxi, which is a popular form of transport in Chiang Mai. It’s a type of van, open at the back, with a bench along each side. We spent the next 45 minutes travelling up to a jungle in the mountains – our home for the day.
When we arrived at the sanctuary, we met the elephants we would be spending the day with: two adults and two babies. Standing next to the elephants was slightly intimidating – even the babies stood a good few feet taller than us! Nonetheless, the elephants were all calm and very friendly, and the two babies were playful and cheeky, like little kids! Being in such close contact with these animals was almost surreal; I definitely did not expect to be able to interact so freely with them.
We met our two guides, who told us a bit about the sanctuary and how they care for the elephants. We were then each given a tote bag full of bananas to feed the elephants. As we were taking the bananas out of the bags for them, it was surprisingly difficult to keep up with how fast they were taking them from our hands and eating them! When our bags were empty and we had no more bananas to give them, the baby elephants did not quite believe us, putting their trunks into the bags to see for themselves!
The next part of the day was a hike with the elephants. What I quickly noticed about the sanctuary was that the elephants are not forced to do anything that they wouldn’t naturally do. This meant that the hike through the jungle was completely led by the elephants, which was an amazing and unique experience. At one point, we even witnessed an elephant pulling an entire tree out of the ground with her trunk because her baby’s leg was tangled in a branch!
Our next task of the day was to make the elephants’ ‘medicine’. This involved crushing ingredients such as turmeric with a pestle and mortar, and making them into ‘medicine balls’ to feed to them. Not quite as advanced as the NHS, but it was good enough for them!
This was followed by a spa treatment for the elephants, where we exfoliated them in a mud bath and washed them off using ‘soap’ made of tree bark. These were some glamorous elephants! The guides showed us how to make the soap – we hammered a piece of tree bark until it was soft, and then soaked it in water. It then lathered up like soap and it was ready to use! Trying to wash the baby elephants was a challenge, as every time they saw the soap, they tried to grab it from our hands. Despite being babies, they were a lot stronger than us!
It was then time to say goodbye to our new friends for the day. This day was an experience that I really couldn’t recommend enough. To get your elephant fix whilst travelling, avoid riding elephants, and go to an elephant sanctuary instead!
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