Elephant Nature Park

**Keep posted for some cool videos coming soon. Will post when sufficient wifi is acquired.

Quick apology for what may seem like repetitive pictures, it's hard to capture and show how amazing these guys were up close and personal. We were picked up at 7 a.m. from our hostel in a commuter van where we met what would be our group for the two day trip. After a quick yet moving informative video of the Asian elephants and their history of how they were treated, we finally arrived at the Elephant Nature Park. I had been waiting my entire life for this moment, finally just to touch an elephant. We were guided to the platform where we left our bags and found buckets of bananas, watermelon, pumpkins, and cucumbers. Groups of elephants slowly grazed in, ready for their daily morning treat. We were told to hold our hands out from behind the red line about three feet away from the elephants, and they would stick their trunks through, wrap around the treat, and toss it into their mouths. The ends of their trunks feel solid, yet squishy as they wrap around your hand holding the food. 

Nola's look of pure joy after feeding her first elephant

After a good feeding session, we set off to see the different elephant groups. The entire park has 64 elephants, mostly females, with four babies. Along with the elephants, there were around 400 dogs and 200 cats roaming the property. Elephants mostly stay in packs of females, the nannies and mother, revolving around the baby of the group. 

This gal had a full head of hair

Going in for the kill

As seen below, these were our first actual encounters with the elephants. Sure of how powerful these big guys were, yet unsure of how close we could get, you can see we were hesitant at first to get too close.

Loving nanny and baby moment

Nola's foot inside an elephant's footprint

After getting more comfortable with the elephants, we were able to come up to them and stroke, pat, and hug their trunks and sides. Real live elephants don't feel quite the same as my collection of stuffed elephants at home, their skin is a little more rough, with coarse hair and dry wrinkles. Placing your hand on their side, you could feel their muscles flexing as they shift their weight, which was incredible to feel their strength. The trunk, though flexible and slightly squishy at the bottom, was super solid and strong up top.

We went on to walk around meeting different groups of elephants and learning more and more about elephants and the park. We watched the elephants as they gave themselves baths, and right afterwords completely covering themselves in mud and dirt again.

Elephant teeth. Elephants only have four teeth

Ele goin for the butt grab

After lunch, we continued to walk, meet the elephants, and learn new facts until we got down to the river to wash our young elephant. Lured with a basket of fruit, we scooped buckets of water and wet every inch of the elephant. Washing the younger elephant happened to be much easier than the elephant next to us, who was much too tall to reach the top of. This marked the end of day one's elephant activities, and we were left on our own to relax, see our bungalow, and meet some new doggy friends. 

This poor guy was paralyzed waist down, yet
still managed scratch himself and keep smiling.

Dinner was served at six, buffet style, with many different vegetarian Thai stir fries and curries. As an animal sanctuary, the meat was fake, yet still delicious. For dessert there was an array of different brightly colored jello looking substances. To our surprise, they ended up being more like a chewy and very sweet taffy. We conversed with our group members from New Zealand, along with our dog friend who relaxed on the table throughout dinner, without begging for food once. He stayed there the whole night, and probably through the morning as well. After dinner, the overnight guests were shown a video about the mistreatment of elephants and the owner of the Elephant Nature Park. Her efforts have been tremendous in helping save the elephants and getting them back to where they belong. Despite how horrific the film was, it was inspiring to learn about the proper treatment of the elephants.

After a long and exciting day, we were ready to dream about elephants. The next day we had breakfast at 7, followed by a jam packed day of elephants with our new guide, Sunshine. I would say the best two words to describe sunshine are passionate and cheeky. 

The elephant themed bungalow

The sunset over the river from our bungalow

Sunshine really knew his stuff growing up with elephants in his small village. We trekked to each of the elephant groups, and helped make sure their ears were flapping and tails swinging, a sign of happiness and health. We watched a group in the water with two year old "Doc Mai", a baby boy who had quite the playful side. This little guy was pretty troublesome as he refused to get out of the water.  In fact, Sunshine told us that he behaves a lot like a monkey and he needs a lot of nannies to keep him from getting into trouble. He approached us quickly once, thinking that we would play tag or have a pushing war with him.

This group of elephants had a big ball to play soccer with

We waded across the river with the group of dogs that had been following us the whole day, and arrived at an isolated area where three older elephants were taking in the sun. What was special about this group was one of the girls, who had a severely broken hip. As seen below, she could hardly stand right, and with every step her hip would sink and her leg looked like it was crumbling. This was a result of forced breeding and logging, which included horrible methods of training. A comment about putting down the pained elephants struck up a heated debate between Sunshine and another member of our group. It was amazing to hear how passionate he was about saving these animals and keeping them safe.

Interesting fact: these elephants are separated from the rest because
the leader of the group is highly protective of the injured one. They
worked in the logging industry together for a long time and then were
separated for over a decade. When the leader elephant met her friend
again at ENP and saw that she was injured she got very angry and protective.

We moved on after lunch to find two elephants higher up on a different property. After crossing a not so sturdy bridge, we climbed up to a spot where two elephants were alone looking for food. These elephants were taking their first steps into being able to survive on their own, which is a huge step for the Elephant Nature Park. 

Nola's second favorite bridge, only because we
didn't shake this one.

The day was complete after seeing different and special groups of elephants, and hearing about their stories of what they were rescued from. We watched as the water buffalo crossed the river and had a final goodbye with our group and guide. 

Sko Buffs

Nola- This experience was everything I could have ever hoped for. I learned so much more about elephants and that was really exciting and personal for me. It was a dream come true to just touch an elephant, let alone feed, bathe, and hug one. These guys are just so smart and delicate, despite their size, and deserve to be treated with respect. It's amazing to see the passion and dedication put into these animals here and I felt so lucky to be a part of that. I cannot wait to come back and hopefully volunteer for more time. Before you take a vacation to Asia, make sure you think twice about elephant trekking or shows. Check out savetheelephants.org to learn a little more about why these animals are so special and what is happening to them.

Hunter and Paul- Nola is obviously very passionate about her favorite animal but I can honestly say that I felt nothing for elephants more than the awe of their size at the zoo before visiting ENP. Elephants have been an important part of Thai culture and society for a long time. They have especially been used as labour animals because they are so strong. Putting in a hard days work and pulling heavy weight in the sun all day with a few small breaks is hardly the problem because humans do this sort of thing all the time and we make cattle do it all the time. The problem is how they train elephants to do these sorts of things. We watched a horrifying video that goes into the process in detail. They steal the elephants at a young age from their mothers and then poke them with sticks while they are stuck, immobile and unable to defend themselves. They poke them in the sensitive areas to inflict as much pain as possible to break the elephants spirit and attachment to its mother. Oh ya, the sticks have two inch nails stuck into the end of them. The whole idea is to make the baby elephant so terrorized and in so much pain that it gives up on life. This isn't a problem for most farm animals but elephants are different because they can feel. The fact that the two reunited elephants had an emotional connection once reuniting, elephants can grieve over a lost loved one for decades, and the horrible screams of the young elephant as they captured it and tortured it are testaments to that they can feel. Obviously this should be stopped right? Well there are no laws to treat elephants with any sort of civility currently because the government is faced with changing a thousand year old tradition of it's people. A similar thing is going on with bull fighting in Spain. The facts are such, current fear tactics and spirit breaking tactics are very cruel and have been used for thousands of years and are crucial to many minority groups survival. Positive mutual friendship tactics are just arising and are wildly successful, for some things much more so than the alternative. For me the choice is clear and I hope the Thai government agrees sooner rather than later. Lastly, as Nola said, the "training" for logging and farm work is the same training for elephant riding so please please please do not partake and keep the demand for breaking elephants as low as possible.