Elephant Camp near Chiang Mai

We went to an elephant camp near Chiang Mai to ride an elephant, go on an ox cart, and ride on a river raft.  The elephant show was rather "hokey" but it was still interesting.  The elephant ride and the ox cart ride simply took us around the area but were still enjoyable.  Teri stayed at the Golden Cupids with my Mom as it would have been very challenging for my Mom to trudge about the paths of the Elephant Camp as well as to climb on and off the ox cart and the elephant.  

Due to the dramatic reduction in their natural habitat, the wild elephant population in Thailand is under severe strain. Many bull elephants are being killed for their ivory tusks while many calves are being taken from their parents to be trained as "entertainers" in elephant camps. Possibly within the near future, most elephants in Thailand will be the domesticated ones found in the elephant camps. Others will eke out a sordid existence as street elephants hoping for some income from passersby, tourists, and who ever else happen to be walking by.

Although many commercial elephant camps exploit the elephants, we did not see any mistreatment of the elephants in this camp. In fact, we saw several baby elephants tagging along with their mothers at the camp. The elephant camp strives to provide an entertaining as well as educational venue for visitors. The proceeds from the visitors help support the elephants, their handlers and their families who are residents of the camp. Pepe, the owner of the Golden Cupids, recommended this camp.  Thus we feel comfortable in visiting this camp since it meets Pepe's deep held sense of compassionate Buddhism.

The "mahout" or handler giving a bunch of bananas to his elephant

Demonstrating one of the traditional work tasks for an elephant  Alas, due to mechanization, there are few jobs left for elephants these days.  As a result, many elephants have been put to sleep or abused as street elephants.  Many, if not most, of the mahouts cannot afford to maintain an elephant since they have little or no income.

Rolling logs together is yet another one of the tasks that elephants formerly did in the logging industry.  However, the Thai government banned practically all logging in 1989.  This in effect abruptly placed thousands of mahouts and their elephants into unemployment.

We took a ride on an ox cart in the area surrounding the elephant camp

Although the elephant that James and I were on started well before the one for Kacy and Pat, they somehow got ahead of us. Despite my disappointment at "losing" the race it did afford me an opportunity to take some photos of Kacy and Pat on their speed demon elephant.

But "slow and steady" triumphs in the end as James and I finished ahead of Pat and Kacy. They are obviously behind us in this photo. :-)

We next went on a river raft. You can tell from the photo that the river was frothing with raging rapids and chaotic currents. But being tough, we were unperturbed by the violent and wild turbulence of the river.

James taking a turn at pushing the boat forward

Pat taking a turn at the rear of the raft.  You may be asking where is the photo of me taking a turn with the pole. However, my responsibility was the extremely difficult task of sitting and making sure that the raft was perfectly balanced. :-)

You can see how deep this raging river was by comparing the river height to the elephants. However, the elephants were on the shallow river bank while we were zooming along with reckless abandon in the middle of the wild river :-)