Spending A Day With Gentle Giants

We went to an elephant sanctuary located in the countryside of Chiang Mai. Before elephant sanctuaries, some of the elephant homes force the elephants to give rides to people but it is very bad for the elephants because:

it might break their bones and back
they will have skin problems because they are forced not to throw mud, water, or dirt onto their back because it will get the people all dirty (they need things like that as a “lotion” to protect their skin)
the instructors kick the elephants in the ears to make them move or they will just stand there.

But the elephant sanctuary that we went to did not force them to give rides and the animals can do what they want. The elephant sanctuary rescued elephants that were loggers or piggyback-riders. We used Elephant Delight which is a very good sanctuary that gives the elephants plenty of food and space and is a saddle-off camp from the main camp of the Elephant Nature Park, which is very popular because it is ethical and treats the animals well.

The elephants were beautiful, large, and graceful. We started with a one and a half hour drive to the sanctuary where we prepared food for the elephants and gave it to them. The food that we gave them was sugar canes, bananas, and pumpkin - you don’t even have to take the shell off the pumpkins or the bananas because they will just eat it whole! We really enjoyed the very funny crunches and noises that the elephants made when they were eating the food that we gave them. We took a bag of bananas to feed them on the way to the mud pool. We took a walk that was about 30 minutes long to the muddy pool and feed the elephants on the way. When we got to the muddy area, the elephants went right away to the shade to cool off. We made them a nice “sweet” which was made of dried up Tamarind, Rice, Salt, and Corn. I thought that the Tamarind was poop. We feed it to the elephants which really liked it!! We watched (and got a bit dirty…) the elephants have a nice and refreshing mud bath!!! After lunch (which the sanctuary provided for us) we went to the river with the elephants. On the way we saw one of the elephants completely tear down a banana tree from another person’s property!!! It was a bit higher than the ground so she had to climb up a small hill to get to the tree. The elephants shared the tree together and we kept on walking (the elephants like the middle of the tree that is white and looks alot like string cheese).

When we got to the river one of the elephants went by herself to the middle of the river where she just enjoyed herself right where she was. We got to bathe one of the elephants and soon got into a water fight!!! We played/bathed for about 20 minutes until we heard a growling noise that surprisingly was coming from one of the elephants. As soon as the growling noise had began all the elephants came into a group which they stayed there for about 5 minutes. During that time the elephants were curling up their trunks and then thumping in onto the ground. Our guide said that it only happened when they were excited, scared, or heard loud motorcycles. It was a very interesting 5 minutes. After we said goodbye to the elephants we took a bamboo raft down a little bit of the river and to the other side where we got into our van and then went home.

There were 4 beautiful female elephants that we enjoyed. One of the elephants was 71 years old and we nicknamed her Old Lady. Spending a full day with the beautiful, graceful, big, and gentle animals was definitely worth it!!! They were so beautiful and graceful.