Sanctuary – amusemusings

Many tourists visit Thailand with a hope to ride an elephant. It’s pretty typical and the Thai government and local cities promote it due to its popularity within the tourism industry. After some pre-trip research, we found this is actually quite cruel to the elephants. Despite their enormous size, their spines aren’t meant to carry such weight (between the mahout, a couple tourists & the seating apparatus… the weight can easily exceed half a ton). Additionally, baby elephants are captured in the wild, separated from their parents, and go through a brutal tortuous domestication process that can take up to two weeks in which they’re tied in place by ropes, starved & severely beaten and must be watched at all times so they don’t purposefully step on the trunks to suffocate themselves and end their misery. This breaks their spirit to make them docile and amenable to learning stupid circus tricks. So it’s a rotten industry, one that we refused to support and one that Americans can’t act as if they’re above given all of the stories of atrocities about the circus industry’s treatment of animals. So instead, Amy and I found this awesome Elephant Nature Park, a couple hours outside Chiang Mai, that’s a charitable sanctuary for elephants rescued from not only the tourism industry, but also the logging industry (Thailand has outlawed use of elephants in logging but it’s still done deep in the jungle by local villages) and those injured by accidents (including land mines still very prevalent in Laos thanks to the secret American war). The large parcel of land containing river access was donated to the reserve, which happens to be right down the road from one of these elephant riding parks (we jokingly imagined bar fights erupting between the locals at night), and further donations go towards buying elephants out of the tourism industry and upkeep of course. It’s a lovely place and you can pay to visit, tour the facility and interact with the elephants. It was remarkable to be so close to and touching, feeding and washing these very gentle, sweet, intelligent giant beasts. It was remarkably life changing and I urge anyone who’s visiting the area to schedule a visit.
I’m off my soapbox now. Thanks for listening.

Each elephant has a mahout, a personal caretaker, & the bond between elephant & mahout seems undeniable

This little guy in front is the youngest baby at the farm (2yo). Mama is very protective so we had to keep a bit of distance. Obviously the park is not breeding elephants but sometimes a rescued female will later reveal a pregnancy. In order to prevent pregnancies at the park, the young, virile, aggressive and large males are kept isolated in their own habitat. We saw them from quite a distance as they’re known to throw rocks at people. Perhaps unhappy about something?

Below are a bunch of links to YouTube videos, primarily for my niece & nephews but also for any elephant loving adult. They’re pretty sweet. (Fam – I have a few more vids of elephants eating; lemme know if you want those too).

https://youtu.be/io5iGu5-ewM
https://youtu.be/A7f1UtPHBiI
https://youtu.be/zB50fEM8ntg
https://youtu.be/zuJ6HQZA8rw
https://youtu.be/f3-M_ZiEHLI
https://youtu.be/127z008qdTc
https://youtu.be/j0xtV4W-X24

amusemusings

Do shit in life that makes your heart race (Instagram: angelamusings)

Tag: Sanctuary

The truth about elephants