The Truth About Elephant Trekking

Few experiences can compare with meeting one of the world’s largest vegetarians. Up to ten feet tall at the shoulder, Elephas maximus, better known as the Asian elephant, is the very definition of a gentle giant, happy to accept a spiny pineapple or a bunch of ripe bananas from an awestruck two-legged visitor. According to biologists, perhaps as many as 100,000 members of this species occupied Southeast Asia in the early 1900s, but in the century since, these animals have seen their range steadily shrink as logging, slash and burn agriculture, and a growing human population encroach on the tropical and subtropical forests pachyderms depend on for survival. Poaching and habitat fragmentation further threaten the small numbers that exist in the wild in Thailand today, now largely limited to national parks such as Khao Yai and Khao Cha Mao, as well as isolated tracts of land along the Cambodian, Laotian, and Myanmar borders.

While their numbers in the wild have decreased, their popularity as a tourist attraction has only grown, due in part to the government ban on logging that effectively put many domesticated elephants out of work. At present, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) lists nearly four dozen tour operators that offer short rides or longer treks. Clearly elephants are big business. But what kind of business exactly? These highly social animals require lots of fresh water and about 330 pounds (150 kg) of food per day, not to mention quite a bit of space. So how are they trained and cared for? A phrase on the TAT website offers a telling if disappointing clue: “the treatment of Thai elephants varies from elephant camp to elephant camp, some using more humane methods to look after their elephants than others.”

According to Timothy Gorski, director of the documentary How I Became an Elephant, the boom in elephant tourism began in the 1980s and has risen with "the so-called ‘eco-tourism’ phenomenon. Elephant treks are being marketed as eco-friendly conservation tours.” Problematically though, the definition of eco-tourism often differs from company to company, and training methods—rarely witnessed but captured in Gorski’s documentary—are often cruel. The pajaan, a practice that involves caging a young elephant and depriving it of food, sleep, and even contact with its mother, is one such method. In addition, some say that health and safety regulations are minimal and inadequately enforced. As a result, Catherine Bodry, co-author of the last edition of Lonely Planet Thailand, maintains that the long-term well being of elephants in Thailand is largely up to tourists and the general public. But if the future of the Asian elephant depends on public awareness and action, education must be a part of any trek. Unfortunately, this isn’t something that every camp provides.

A Dispatch for DestinAsian

Thailand has roughly 450 kilometers of expressways. Occasionally, it can feel like every other person in the country is using them to get somewhere at the same time. For that reason, driving here is not always a pleasant experience. As for the rules of the road, the Rough Guide to Thailand helpfully remarks that "there are few rules that are generally followed—you'll need to keep your concentration up and expect the unexpected." Fodor's meanwhile, sums up the situation much more bluntly: "Driving in Thailand is not for the faint of heart."

Traffic and safety concerns aside, a road trip through this complicated nation does yield rewards, as I discovered while on assignment for DestinAsian magazine. In a piece entitled "Thailand Uncorked," I traveled to Khao Yai, where several members of the Thai Wine Association are working together to promote a wine trail. Driving between the three vineyards featured in my story, I got a glimpse of Thailand that you'll never see by sticking to bus routes and train lines. In fact, if it weren't for my road trip to wine country, I might never have discovered Palio Khao Yai.

Southeast Asia's Little Italy

Last Sunday was a strange day. Following an afternoon spent puttering around the oldest national park in Thailand, I ended up eating dinner at one of the country's newest attractions: Palio Khao Yai, a "walking street shopping center in Italian-style village mall." Got that? A personal recommendation had led my friends and I to hunt for a burger joint south of the town of Pak Chong, and after mistakenly driving past a vaguely European complex, we found ourselves paying 20 baht each to enter this warren of terracotta-colored buildings. Call it the Little Italy of Southeast Asia.

As out of place as it seemed architecturally, what struck me about Palio was its obvious allure to amateur Thai photographers. While we were there, dozens of people streamed through the gate, usually in couples, and always with cameras. I smirked as they posed in front of the fountain in the piazza, and shook my head in disbelief as they led tiny dogs in sweaters down faux-cobblestone streets. Apparently the ability to shoot portraits against a "Tuscan" backdrop trumped the appeal of creatively-named cafes like Fries Me To The Moon.

It seemed silly to me at the time, but when I thought about it later, I realized that I'd misjudged things. After all, whether or not it's international, a big part of travel is making memories, and for most of us, taking pictures is part of that process. Did I really think that my images of waterfalls and wildlife somehow showed a more authentic side of Thailand? True, I'm the kind of person who prefers hiking to shopping, but a park is a tourist attraction too, and in the end, they're all competing for visitors. In that sense, maybe Palio Khao Yai isn't such a strange place to spend a Sunday.