Elephant Nature Park is an incredible elephant sanctuary in Chiang Mai Province, Northern Thailand. As of January 2018, when I visited, they have about 70 elephants in their care as well as countless rescued dogs. Some of these elephants have been rescued from abuse in circuses and elephant trekking camps, while many others are “retired” and rescued elephants from the logging industry. The park only allows a certain amount of visitors per day, and they get booked up weeks in advance; I booked my visit a month before my trip.
The park has an office in the city of Chiang Mai, and they collected the visitors there early in the morning. It took about an hour and a half to drive out to the park, and we were shown a film on the way. This told the story of how the park was founded by a woman named Lek Chailert, and it showed the terrible conditions and treatment the elephants are taken from. It was emotional to watch, but it made me sure I’d chosen the right place to visit. I didn’t want to support any animal cruelty, and Elephant Nature Park was obviously a caring and ethical sanctuary.
At ENP, visitors are split into small groups of about 10 people, and are led around by a guide. Our sweet and cheerful guide knew all the elephants by name, and all their histories. We headed to the river first, where we were able to throw water over one older elephant to help keep her cool, getting right up near to her. Afterwards we walked around the fields, learning about the elephants we spotted. We encountered elephants of all ages, from playful babies right up to an elderly lady elephant of more than 70 years of age.
We watched them tossing dirt up over themselves and playing in a muddy pool to cool off. Just doing elephant things!
Sometimes our guide would ask us all to step back, because an elephant was about to walk in front of us. A couple of times we had to move quite quickly, as the elephants were playing with the dogs and we needed to get out of their way!
Visitors to ENP must be respectful of the elephants. Unlike many other places in Thailand, you won’t see the animals giving rides, painting pictures or doing tricks here – this is a place to go to see elephants just being themselves, expressing natural behaviours, and socialising with each other. We did not chase after them, but rather let them come up to us on their own. We were also not allowed to touch them, except at feeding time!
Our guide gave us a big basket of watermelons to feed to a couple of the older elephants. One of them was blind, so we had to touch her big trunk and guide it around the watermelon to help her find it. I managed to take one picture of this - although it's not very good, you get the idea!
After eating lunch with all the other groups, we went back out into the grounds to see more of the elephants. These ones didn’t come very near us, but that was okay. It was so peaceful just to watch them roam together.
Finally we met a couple of the males. They have to be kept separately, as they could become aggressive towards visitors out in the open (and also, I don’t think they want their elephants to breed – they already have plenty!). The males came trotting up as soon as they saw us, because we had bananas for them. We couldn’t feed them by hand so had to throw the bananas down, but the guys clearly enjoyed them anyway and kept pestering us for more!
After a long day we all got in the van to drive back to Chiang Mai, and our guide kindly dropped me right to my hostel. I couldn’t wait to get in and tell my hostel roommates what a wonderful place I’d been to! If you’re ever visiting Thailand, I highly recommend taking a trip to Elephant Nature Park. If you love elephants and want to see them up close, don't go and ride on one - don't support any cruelty! This sanctuary is doing great work, and offers an unforgettable experience.