Thailand - Elephant Nature Park

In Chiang Mai, there are elephants everywhere, under one form or another: pictures, statues, bas-relief or miniatures in little shrines. Statues of Ganesh, the elephant god, are scattered around the city. Not that people are Hindu here, but the elephants are the symbol of the city and Ganesh is a lucky god. And people here believe in luck as much as (if not more) in religion :)

A flower is now where a hook used to be

My last day at hand, I thought I would go for another elephant outing, but felt uneasy about the camps. I had seen enough blood in my first elephant trek not to want to encourage that practice again.

Elephant clinic

The Elephant Nature Park is a conservation park where injured and mistreated elephants are brought to live better days. The founder is Sangduen "Lek" Chailert, a little woman who won numerous awards throughout the world and her work has been featured on National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, BBC and other medias. So I expected a great day!!

Bathing time for the babies

I got plenty of observation of these enormous beasts roaming around in a stunning environment. The camp is set in a valley surrounded by little mountains inhabited by hill tribes. Beautiful pictures. Nothing to compare to the chained elephants in smaller camps.

In the mist

Adoptive herd, not necessarily the same family

Friends... One of them is blind by mistreatment, the other one helps

Hand feeding was also fun, even though it didn't last very long. They eat SO MUCH, SO FAST!!! Gluttons :)

I didn't have the chance to give a good scrub at their tough but sensitive skin. We (about 60 people) happily splashed the elephants with buckets instead. Yeah... 60 people is quite a lot... But since there are 37 elephants in the camp, we still did enjoy their presence in relatively small groups.


This camp survives with visitors and donations. And, like me, these visitors want their money to go to a good cause, not to some money-making-mistreating-elephants place. So we end up being quite a few fans in there.

Feeding time!!

To me, even if I childishly would still have loved to give a nice scrub at their great bellies, seeing elephants roaming free (and mating!! WOW, the size of the thing!!) in a stunning location was worth it, and made a great goodbye to Thailand.

Couple in intimacy