(^^ this is cruelty, i selected a non-graphic image)
Please do not EVER ride elephants in Asia, please.. Only go to a well-researched RESCUE center, which at least ensures a better life for these creatures. Yes, the evil “spirit-crushing” process has already been done to them, their mothers killed, babies tortured and beaten to blood for crushing them, but at least at a REAL sanctuary, they get a chance to live as close to a free life as possible in as close to their natural habitat, as possible. Many “sanctuaries” only claim to be such but aren’t, so a few hints: if there’s BATHING of animals by humans, or getting close to them, then this is NOT a sanctuary, not to mention riding at all.. If you see a sharp hook being handled around by the mahout, avoid this place. If you see “swinging” behaviour like “dancing”, it’s NOT dancing, they are suffering and distressed, AVOID THIS PLACE. Watch youtube videos or read blogs for the sanctuary you want to visit, read the negative comments on Google Maps and Tripadvisor and look for red flags – the mahoot should normally have something to control the elephant if things go out of the ordinary, BUT it should only be a normal stick, no sharp hook at the end of it. A real sanctuary would not let you ride them, possibly they will let you feed them but that’s all, and you will walk quite far behind the elephant, the elephant won’t be pushed to go on a certain walk path or whatever, but would be left roaming feely and would have no close human contact except for its mahout (ranger, who takes care of only that elephant and usually for life). And this is how it should be – you should be able to enjoy the elephants from a safe distance not from riding or bathing them. One such place is Kulen Elephant Forest in Cambodia, near Siem Reap. Also, the place where the “World’s loneliest elephant” Kaavan is located, Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary. And the sanctuary owned by Lek Chailert in Thailand, Elephant Nature Park. Check these out and visit them rather than riding elephants, PLEASE. It is more expensive, but these elephants are treated well, they employ the local community to contribute to them by having crops that will then be sold to the sanctuary for food for the elephants (bananas and sugar cane) and in turn these people have reason to protect the animals and to live peacefully with them, and they also have money and food on the table.Also, please never go to circuses with elephants or any other animals, they are CRUEL, really cruel.
Now, I can tell you the story about my visit to Kulen Elephant Forest and have you judge for yourself, also some photos 🙂
So the story goes as this: Since this was my first time in Asia and i wanted to take the most out of it, I didn’t know when I would be back so I really wanted to go visit a real, genuine elephant sanctuary. BUT the problem was that many of these “sanctuaries” are fake, they only claim to be genuine. So the problem was that I only found one sanctuary in Thailand around where I was, and it was still 2h away from Bangkok and therefore there wasn’t any time for it since we had only one day or two there, and i wanted to spend a whole day birding in the Rot Fai park. I’ve researched parks and didn’t find anything in Cambodia, but i was mainly searching in Thailand. So when we arrived in our hotel in Siem Reap where the Angkor park is, at the reception i saw a leaflet of an elephant sanctuary and took one. Didn’t think much of it of course, because if it’s promoted at a hotel, it can’t be a real thing right? That’s what I thought but decided to research it anyway. It had 2000+ reviewes in TripAdvisor and you know, i didn’t care about the good reviews, I cared about the bad ones to really see what’s going on, cared about photos as well as googled videos about it and found a blog post from a traveller who went there. So believe it or not, I barely could, there was only ONE 3-star review of a french guy complaining the snack during the day was not what he expected. Seems like he expected to get a 3-course menu, while the snacks were basically fruit and some sweet stuff. And that’s mentioned but he didn’t read apparently. So ofc that was not a problem. I cared about the animals most of all. So I found this blog post of a person who managed to talk to the owner of the sanctuary and it seems that this man has always wanted to have a sanctuary since his family, unfortunately, owned the business of riding elephants around Angkor Wat, he didn’t like how the animals were treated. So when, under pressure from tourists, Cambodia banned elephant riding (don’t get too happy.. ) only around Angkor Wat, they had to do something with the animals and the man started the sanctuary. The rest of the country still allows riding, so please DO NOT ride them, can’t stress this enough – this supports people who do bad things to these majestic, smart animals. The sanctuary was started right after the ban and that happened right before the Covid pandemic in 2019 – 2020. So for the 2 years that followed, they had lots of struggles, because each elephant had to eat about 150kg of food every day. And they had no funds to purchase so much so they barely survived with the sanctuary.
I decided to give this sanctuary a check, yes, it’s way more expensive than the 10 dollars you’d give for riding an elephant, but it’s sooo worth it. We paid around 80 or 90 EUR per person for a full day there with transport back and forth. What happened was we got picked up and driven to the location in the Kulen mountains. They got us to wait there for a while and we waited on a charming “tree house”, loved it. We sat on a bench and there was a Norwegian or Swedish (i think) man who was an elephant trainer. He worked with the newborn baby elephants and he apparently worked and lived in Asia for a long time. He showed us photos of other animals in Thailand and elsewhere in Asia.
What was really great about this particular sanctuary, was that they have basically employed the local villagers to raise and produce all the food the elephants need, that is, sugar cane, bananas and other things. In return, they’d buy it all, so a win-win situation and once again a win situation because instead of these local people harming elephants they essentially worked for them, a good stimulation for them too.
So when the guide arrived he requested (another really great thing, look!) for all of us to wash our hands in order to remove any cream or anything on our hands, because these things can harm the elephants. Really thoughtful! So we did that and they then requested us to gather around a table where we would prepare a snack for the elephants. This snack would help us “meet” the elephants by feeding them and they’d get used to us. This would be our only interaction with them (which is really great, another red point for them). So the snack consisted of a few ingredients, where each served a specific purpose – rice as a base, we put bananas which they loved, it would make the snack sweet and tasty. We put a little salt to get the necessary minerals from and tamarind, which helps against dehydration. So we mixed all these ingredients and made something like meatballs for them.
Then we got these “riceballs” let’s call them instead, and went to a place where the mahouts have made the elephants stay – behind a wooden pole so they can reach us with their trunks but that’s all. A mahout is basically the person who takes care of the elephant. Each elephant has his own mahout. These mahouts spend their life with that particular elephant. This is the person who really creates a bond with the elephant and the one who the elephant really trusts.
So after we gave the riceballs and the bananas and sugar cane to the elephants, the elephants started walking in the forest and forage for food. In a fake sanctuary, the mahout would basically point and push the elephant where to go and the visitors would be allowed very close to the elephants or even would be allowed to touch them. Elephant’s natural instinct is to NOT be around humans so it’s actually stressful for them with loud tourusts around them, touching them and them having no way out of that. So I was really pleasantly surprised to see that this was not the case in this sanctuary. The elephants walked wherever they wanted, the mahout would walk behind not pushing them or anything, they didn’t have the hook on the stick, just a regular stick (they still need some means of defence in case something goes off), but the sharp hook was missing, which is not the case when you go ride elephants.
I used the chance to ask one of the rangers all the uncomfortable questions I wanted to ask. I asked what do they do with the elephants at night – at night they have to chain them for their own safety and for the safety of the villagers, because the elephants might roam around otherwise which could cause clashes with the villagers since the elephant park is not in any way fenced. During the day the elephants are allowed to walk and forage for food, stay with their friend elephants and also swim in the lake. This is the only time they have to chain them. They also don’t ride them, with the exception of when there is not enough food to forage in certain seasons, so they have to walk the elephants to a waterfall on the other side of the mountain. The issue with riding is not that you ride them per se, they don’t really feel your weight. The issue is that by riding them, it supports people to go steal more babies form their mothers and kill the mothers and then do the “soul-crushing” torment on them, where they beath them, chain them, keep them starving and other terrible things. But at Kulen only the mahout rides his “own” elephant and without the hook etc.
So at the end of our walk we reached the lake where there were elephants already in the water and in order for the elephants not to fight they had to take the ones inside out first before letting other impatient elephants in the water. But the ones inside didn’t want to go out, they were insanely cute, with heads submerged in water and they were making bubbles with their trunks 😀 I totally loved watching that. Then a downpour started and we hid under the tent there where we had the snacks i mentioned earlier. Some fruit and some sweet rice dessert. Really delicious by the way. The mahouts were trying to get the elephants out by offering some sugar cane but.. well.. they weren’t too interested in the sugar cane, the same thing happened at the beginning when we gave them the snacks, they’d grab the sugar cane but then drop it when they see there’s a banana 😀
We watched the elephants bathe for a while and then they threw mud on themselves which is how they protect their skin from the sun. In the end, the mahouts would bring them to a place where they’d give them a bath with a hose, this ensured their feet were clean and they wouldn’t get foot rot. Also helps cool them down.
In the end they brought us back to Siem Reap. Really, this was such a great experience and I was REALLY, really looking for the bad sides of this sanctuary, tried to look under the lens in order to spot the tiniest reason for alarm and write a bad review if need be. However no.. there wasn’t really anything I could complain about, the elephants were really well taken care of. Yes, they did allow a bit too many tourists on the park, but the people weren’t allowed near the animals except for the snack time.
So i totally recommend this place. Let me know how it was if you get to go there 🙂
