Going for a Ride

As today was a travel day, we adventured to seeing the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang Thailand.  It is the only elephant preserve that is sponsored by the Thai government and the King.  

A chance for the crowd to feed the elephants before the show

Bathing the elephants for the show

The group just before they started to spray water from their trunks

The start of the elephant parade to the show area

We learned how elephants were used for logging, but are no longer used in the Thai jungle and they were only worked from 7 AM till 11 AM so that they can rest and be able to work the next day.  When having elephants drag logs they could not be allowed to drag a log more than half of their weight and in some cases the logs had to be brought over a mountain so elephants would be rigged together in tandem.  The 2 elephants are situated one in front of the log to drag it and another behind it to prevent it from running down the mountain.  During the show they also said that the pregnancy of an elephant can last for 16-22 months long and when being used in the forest the babies are at risk of being injured by the work going on or by any other creature like a snake so they have to be separated from the mother.  In this case the workers would put the baby with an older, “retired” mother to act as a surrogate to show the baby the way until they are 3 years old and can be trained for work.  As for sleeping in the wild elephants only sleep for about 4 hours a night, where they lay down because they do not like to move all their weight on and off the ground too much.  During the show the elephants demonstrated the strength of their trunks by helping their trainers up onto their head and they rolled logs with their trunks, but also showed how gentle they can be to pick up their trainers hats and put them back on their heads.  

Sam and Reesha on our ride

Our caravan of elephants

After the show we went for about a half hour ride on the elephants through the jungle and through the river which was cool to see how every elephant lifts the end of their trunk to prevent water from going up their nose.  We then got lunch on at the conservation before we headed off down the road to stop for the night on our travel back down to Bangkok.