When they are born, elephants are assigned to an owner called a mahout. Since elephants can live 60 years, and only sleep 4 hours a day, you could say that the mahouts live essentially as a slave to their elephants. Paula and I had a discussion about how at first, riding on elephants may seem to contradict Intrepid’s philosophy, but it actually does not. There are only about 3000 elephants left in the wild but they are not well protected as the National Parks in Thailand have some corruption in them. Elephants end up being killed, so they are actually better protected when they are not in the wild. But many mahouts cannot afford to feed these gigantic beasts since the elephants can often no longer find work in their traditionally profession of logging (due to deforestation). So the last two options for the elephants and mahouts are begging and tourism. Of course tourism is the better option. And Paula said that Intrpid goes to great lengths to ensure that the guides they use to not mistreat their elephants and that they are well fed and healthy.
We rode elephants for about an hour as part of our Hilltribe trek. There were two people plus a mahout on each elephant. There is a wooden seat on the elephants back to sit on which is not very comfortable. Great view though! The mahouts generally sat on the elephant’s neck, but ours jumped down and motioned for one of us to try sitting on the neck. My husband isn’t very flexible, so this wasn’t comfortable for him, but it was just perfect for me. The elephants skin is dry and thick – I wondered if it could even feel my hands resting on it’s head. Our elephant was sort of the leader of the group, so she was very well behaved. Some of the other elephants were younger and got easily distracted by all the snacks along the trail. I looked back once and the elephant behind us had a whole tree in it’s trunk! All of the animals were very gentle. I found the river crossing especially fun. Sometimes they just walked in the river for a while rather than on the bank. One of the mahouts sang beautiful songs during the whole trip. The whole experience was great – elephants are beauties!